KABUL, Afghanistan — A hand grenade attack near a school in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday afternoon wounded multiple children, authorities said. Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said late Monday that “a number of children” had been wounded, and said an investigation was underway. He did not provide further details. Richard Bennett, the United Nations’ special rapporteur for Afghanistan, on Tuesday condemned “the heinous attack harming numerous children near a school” the previous day. Afghan media said around 50 children were hurt in the blast, which occurred in a part of the capital populated mainly by the Hazara ethnic minority. Hazaras, who make up around 9% of the Afghan population, have long suffered attacks and persecution in Afghanistan. Most are Shiite Muslims, and they have been targeted repeatedly in the past by Sunni Muslim radicals like the Islamic State group, while they have also faced discrimination in the Sunni majority country. In May 2021, a few months before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in the wake of a chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops, three bombings at a school in Kabul killed dozens of people, all of them from the Hazara community and most of them young girls leaving class. That school, like the one where the explosion occurred Monday, was in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, the main Hazara district in the Afghan capital. In a social media post on X, Bennett said an independent investigation to bring those responsible to justice was essential. “Once again this mainly Hazara part of Kabul has been targeted. Deplorable!” he wrote.
