Afghanistan: 8 killed, 30 injured by IED at university

KABUL, Afghanistan

An IED blast inches away from the main entrance of Kabul University in the Afghan capital on Friday morning killed eight people and injured more than 30, officials confirmed.

The IED, placed in a car parked next to the southern entrance of the university, went off with a bang when dozens of candidates studying law were queued up for examinations, the Interior Ministry said in an official statement

Firdaus Faramarz, national police spokesman in Kabul, told Anadolu Agency most of the victims are civilians.

The Public Health Ministry confirmed the killing of eight people, while over 30 were injured, some critically.

Court officials have been on the Taliban’s hit list for some time now, but the group was quick to deny involvement via social media.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for this rare attack at a university.

It comes on the heels of the country’s premier spy agency, NDS, taking into custody a Kabul University lecturer among others on charges of propagating pro-Daesh ideology and recruiting fighters for the terrorist group.

The NDS arrested four alleged members of the local Daesh (so-called Islamic State-Khorasan or IS-K) terrorist group involved in the recruitment of fighters and organizing terror attacks.

According to the charge sheet, Kabul University lecturer Mubashir Muslimyar and three graduates of the same institution told investigators they were working closely with local Daesh operatives in the Nangarhar province.

Hameedullah Faruqi, the university chancellor, told a conference at the campus on Thursday that they would never allow academia to be used for political propaganda or militant activities.

This April a research paper, Religious Radicalism in the Higher Education of Afghanistan by the Afghanistan Institute of Strategic Studies, warned of the growing trend of radicalization in universities.