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At least 19 people were killed, including students, and 26 injured in a bomb blast at a religious seminary in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday.
According to the local officials, the blast took place in the Jahdia seminary in Aybak city in Samangan after afternoon prayers.
Afghanistan’s Tolo News quoted Ferozuddin Munib, the head of the provincial Department of Information and Culture, as saying: “This was not a suicide attack but a mine blast and was placed there.”
So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the blast.
“It was around 1.00pm. We were praying when the blast happened,” Mohammad, a victim wounded in the blast, told the media.
BBC, quoting an unidentified source, reported that the majority of the victims of the blast were children, aged between nine to 15.
There are fears the official death toll could rise. An unnamed doctor at the Samangan Provincial Hospital, where the wounded were receiving treatment, told AFP that “all of them are children and ordinary people”.
Patients that had sustained grievous injuries in the blast were taken to a bigger hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif, which is about 120km away from Samangan.
Taliban’s Interior Ministry spokesperson, Abdul Naafi Takor, said: “Our detective and security forces are working to identify the perpetrators of this unforgivable crime and bring them to justice.”
The former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, issued a statement on his social media and said he “strongly condemns the explosion in the religious seminary” in Samangan provincial capital, Aybak, “due to which many of our countrymen were martyred and injured”.
He added that “this terrorist act” and “crime against humanity” is the “work of enemies of the people and all human and Islamic values”.
