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Deadly bombing near Kabul girls school sparks international outcry
Saturday’s bombing near a girls school in Kabul city has sparked outrage among the international community, including the US, the UK, Germany and the United Nations, who have all condemned the incident in the strongest terms.
In a statement issued by the US State Department, Washington called the attack “barbarous” and called for the immediate end to violence.
Early Sunday, reports indicated that the death toll had risen to 58 with over 150 people wounded.
The incident happened on Saturday evening when a car bomb was detonated close to the school. Among the victims are many students, including girls.
In their statement, the US said: “The United States condemns the barbarous attack near a girls’ school in Kabul, Afghanistan.”
The State Department also said that the US will continue to support and partner with people of Afghanistan.
“We will continue to support and partner with the people of Afghanistan, who are determined to see to it that the gains of the past two decades aren’t erased.”
According to the Afghan Ministry of Interior, three explosions took place close to the school. The first was a car bomb followed by two IEDs.
No group or individual have so far claimed responsibility for the explosions but the Taliban denied involvement in the attack in a tweet posted shortly after the incident.
However, President Ashraf Ghani has blamed the Taliban for the attack.
The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also strongly condemned the “horrific attack”.
He said those responsible for “this heinous crime” must be held accountable.
Guterres also underlined the urgency of ending the violence in Afghanistan and achieving a peaceful settlement of the conflict.
Alison Blake, the UK’s Ambassador to Kabul also condemned the attack and said: “Children must never be the target of violence.”
“Our sympathies and deepest condolences to the families and all affected by this atrocious attack on schoolchildren in Kabul.
“Words are not enough. Those responsible must be brought to justice and held to account,” she said.
The German Embassy in Kabul also issued a statement and said: “We condemn yesterday’s horrific attack on Sayed-ul-Shuhada girls high school. Killing children is an assault on the future of Afghanistan.
“Our thoughts are with victims of this despicable act and their families. Our deepest condolences to families and friends of the murdered students.”
UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore also issued a statement and said violence around schools is not acceptable.
“Schools should be a place of peace and a place where children can play, learn and socialize with a sense of security and safety,” she said.
“Children should never and under no circumstances be the target of violence.
“UNICEF urges the warring parties to abide by international human rights and humanitarian law and to ensure the safety and security of all children,” Fore said.
A senior security official meanwhile told Reuters on Sunday on condition of anonymity that most of the casualties were students coming out of the Sayed ul Shuhada school, and many were badly wounded in hospital.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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