By EHSANULLAH AMIRI and JESSICA DONATI
KABUL—Afghanistan stepped up security in Kabul in response to a weekend bombing of a protest march by Islamic State that killed more than 80 people and injured hundreds, in the first major attack by the group outside its stronghold in the country’s east.
President Ashraf Ghani ordered Afghan forces to increase security at mosques, with a particular focus on those in western Kabul, where the attack took place. “Afghan National Security and Defence Forces will avenge the terrorist attack in Kabul,” Mr. Ghani said in a statement.
The protesters were mostly ethnic Hazaras, a largely Shiite minority group, who had gathered to demonstrate against plans to reroute a new power line.
A suicide bombing killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 230 others at a protest in Kabul Saturday. Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings on Saturday. The Sunni extremist group said it targeted the “gathering of Shiites.”
The Afghan interior ministry issued a ban on further gatherings for the next 10 days in an effort to prevent violence that could further inflame ethnic tensions. The weekend terror attack was one of the worst in Kabul since the U.S.-led military invasion in 2001.
Islamic State emerged in Afghanistan as foreign forces were leaving in 2014 and has proved resilient despite an escalation in U.S. and Afghan military efforts targeting its stronghold in districts of eastern Nangarhar province. It remains embedded there and has recently begun seeking to expand its foothold in surrounding areas.
The suicide bombers that carried out the Kabul attack were from Achin district, according to an Afghan intelligence official, an area that has been targeted by dozens of American airstrikes and operations by Afghan ground forces.
The attack follows a series of kidnappings and killings of Hazaras and has renewed worries over tensions in majority Sunni-Muslim Afghanistan, which has been largely spared the sectarian strife that has plagued other Muslim neighbors in the region.
Hazaras are considered the country’s third-largest ethnic group and the only one that is predominantly Shiite. They were persecuted under the Taliban and there are concerns that the group is again being targeted, now by Islamic State and other militant groups.
The U.S. has carried out a heavy airstrike campaign against Islamic State in Afghanistan since President Barack Obama gave the military more scope to attack the group. Joint U.S.-Afghan efforts initially appeared successful in pushing the Islamist group back, but over recent months Islamic State has made a comeback in several eastern districts.
Earlier this month, an Islamic State suicide bomber attacked the leader of a militia backed by the country’s intelligence agency, who survived.
The Afghan government is launching a new operation against the group with additional U.S. military support.
Hazaras had gathered in Kabul to oppose a plan for a 500-kilovolt transmission line linking Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with electricity-starved Afghanistan and Pakistan. The line would bypass Bamiyan province, which is populated mainly by ethnic Hazaras. The rerouting of the line, they fear, will deprive the central Afghan province of a major source of electricity and investment.
The protest had attracted hundreds of young men and women, many of them students, along with teachers and activists. People fleeing from the scene were covered in blood and many were crying.
Emergency services were quick to reach the scene of the attack, where bodies were strewn across the bloodstained square.On Sunday, a procession was held for mourners burying the dead at a graveyard atop a hill in a western part of the city.http://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistan-increases-security-after-kabul-bombing-1469385932
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