Suicide Blast At Kabul School Kills 56

KABUL: A suicide bomber targeted students preparing for university exams in a Kabul neighborhood on Wednesday, killing at least 56 people and wounding 62 in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, officials said.

The bomber detonated his explosives inside a coaching centre in the Dasht-i Barcha area of Kabul where a group of young men and women, all high school graduates, were studying for university entrance exams.

"We can confirm the attack was caused by a bomber on foot. The bomber detonated himself inside the education center," said police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai.

Jawad Ghawari, a member of the city's Shia clerical council, blamed Daesh also known as ISIS group, which has carried similar attacks in the past, hitting mosques, schools and cultural centres.

In the past two years, Ghawari said there were at least 13 attacks on the Shia community in Kabul alone.

It was not clear how many students were at the centre - which specialises in preparing students for university exams - at the time of the attack. 

On August 3, nearly 40 people were killed and dozens more injured in a bombing and shooting attack on Shia worshippers in eastern Afghanistan near Pakistan's border. The attack was carried out in the city of Gardez, the center of Paktia province.

The rise of Daesh in Afghanistan has triggered concerns in a country that has already been torn apart by decades of Taliban-led militancy and the 2001 invasion of the United States and its allies.

Daesh, which has been crushed in Iraq and Syria, has reportedly managed to take recruits from Taliban defectors in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan.