Kabul:
Dozens of women from Afghanistan's Hazara minority staged protests in the capital on Saturday, after a suicide bombing killed 20 people a day earlier.
A suicide bomber blew up at a study hall in Kabul on Friday as hundreds of students in Dasht-e-Barchi district were taking tests to prepare for university entrance exams.
The western district is primarily a Shia Muslim enclave and home to the minority Hazara community. The Hazaras are a historically repressed group and have been the target of some of Afghanistan's most brutal attacks in recent years.
Police said at least 20 people were killed, but the United Nations put the number at 24.
On Saturday, about 50 women marched through a hospital in Dashte Balti, where several victims of the attack were being treated, chanting "Stop the Hazara genocide. It's not a crime to be a Shiite." Angry protesters in black hijabs and headscarves held banners that read:
"Stop killing Hazaras," he reported, an AFP correspondent.
A witness told his AFP news agency that a suicide bomber had exploded in the women's section of the segregated hall.
"Yesterday's attacks were aimed at Hazaras and Hazara girls," protester Farzana Ahmadi, 19, told AFP.
"We demand an end to this genocide. We protested to demand our rights."
Demonstrators then gathered outside the hospital, chanting slogans, and dozens of Taliban stood guard with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Since the hardline Taliban returned to power last August, protests by women have become dangerous as dozens of protesters have been arrested and rallies dispersed after Taliban forces opened fire into the air. rice field.
No group has claimed responsibility for Friday's attack on the Khaj Higher Education Center.
But the Islamic State (IS) group, which considers Shiites to be heretics, has claimed that girls, schools and mosques in the area have been attacked before.
The Taliban also view the Hazara community as infidels, and human rights groups have often accused them of targeting them during his 20-year uprising against the US-backed former government. rice field.
Since returning to power, the Taliban have been committed to protecting minorities and addressing security threats. But human rights group Amnesty International said Friday's attacks "disgrace the Taliban's inability and utter failure as a de facto authority to protect the people of Afghanistan."
Last May, before the Taliban returned to power, Dashte said three of his bombs exploded near a school in Balti, killing at least 85 of his people, mostly girls, and injuring about 300 others. did.
Neither group was held responsible again.