At least 10 including children killed in a suicide bombing outside an education center

Kabul: A suicide attack in Afghanistan’s capital killed at least ten people and wounded 20 others, including schoolchildren, the interior ministry said. The explosion struck outside an education center in a heavily Shiite neighborhood of western Kabul. No group claimed immediate responsibility for the bombing. The Taliban rejected any connection with the attack. An Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility for a similar suicide attack at an education center in August 2018, in which 34 students were killed. Within Afghanistan, Islamic State has launched large-scale attacks on minority Shiites, whom it views as apostates.

There has been an upsurge in violence between Taliban and Afghan forces in the country recently, even as representatives from the two warring sides begin their own peace talks in Doha to end the decades-long war in Afghanistan. Earlier Saturday a roadside bomb killed nine people in eastern Afghanistan after it struck a minivan full of civilians, a local official said. Ghazni province police spokesman Ahmad Khan Sirat said that a second roadside bomb killed two policemen after it struck their vehicle that was making its way to the victims of the first explosion.