Hazaras Protest After an Islamic State Attack Kills 10 in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber killed 10 people when he set off explosives Friday in a crowd of Shiite Muslims near a mosque complex in Kabul, the latest attack to target ethnic and religious minorities in the Afghan capital.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the strike, which also wounded 22 people, but a government spokesman blamed another terrorist group, the Haqqani network, a Pakistani-based organization affiliated with the Taliban.

The Hazaras are a long-oppressed minority in Afghanistan whose members tend to be Shiite, and the blast prompted a group to take to the street in protest of the security failures, marching and chanting near the site of the explosion before crews had finished cleaning up.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack in a statement, saying Afghans would not be cowed by terrorism, but his words were likely to ring hollow with the Hazaras.

Several other attacks against the ethnic group in recent years have been attributed to the Islamic State, touching off large protests in Kabul by Hazaras, who say too little is done to protect them and destabilizing the government of Ghani.

“Suicide attacks are a part of our daily life that we see but can’t do anything about,” said Hayad, who uses only one name, and is a resident of the Hazara neighborhood where the explosion took place. “The situation is critical and the government sleeps.”

The most lethal suicide bombing against Hazaras came in 2016, killing more than 80 people. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack and for subsequent strikes on Shiite mosques, including the one Friday.

Nasrat Rahimi, a deputy spokesman for the Interior Ministry, attributed the attack Friday to the Haqqani network, which has carried out several deadly attacks in Afghanistan over the years, although the Taliban denied it was responsible.

A security guard, Ali Reza, said he saw the suicide attacker walk into a line of Hazaras waiting to enter a mosque complex for a ceremony commemorating a revered leader, Abdul Ali Mazari, a veteran of the 1980s war against the Soviet Union.

The attacker set off his explosives before passing through a police screening post, suggesting that he may have triggered the bomb after a policeman spotted it. Rahim said that three policemen were killed.

In the aftermath of the blast, a chaotic scene formed on the street as police whistled at and kicked bystanders to turn them away from the site, although many refused to leave.

About an hour after the explosion, a hundred or so young Hazara men streamed out of the mosque complex and defiantly marched in the street, chanting, “God is great!”

Mohammad Salim Nazari, a member of the group, said participants decided to go ahead with a previously planned demonstration to honor the Hazara leader.

“I think the Afghan government is trying to provide security, but they cannot as the insurgents are very clever,” Nazari said. He said Hazaras were not the only ones who were threatened. “Every day they change their methods. All of Afghanistan is insecure.”

The protest went ahead even as police wearing blue surgical gloves were still retrieving human remains and carrying body bags to ambulances.

Outside the capital, Taliban attacks on police checkpoints and other sites killed 16 people Friday, authorities said.