At least 65 people were killed and another 240 wounded in the Afghan capital on Saturday, when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed clothing among a large crowd of demonstrators, officials and witnesses said.
The Islamic State’s press branch claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in a Kabul square packed with thousands of protesters only few miles away from presidential palace, media reports said.
The victims and marchers were almost all ethnic Hazara Shiites, considered by the Sunni radical Islamic State to be infidels.
The government had received intelligence that an attack could take place, and had warned the march organizers, a spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told The Associated Press.
“We had intelligence over recent days and it was shared with the demonstration organizers, we shared our concerns because we knew that terrorists wanted to bring sectarianism to our community,” presidential spokesman Haroon Chakhansuri said.
