KABUL: The death toll in a suicide attack on a demonstration in Kabul on Saturday has risen to 80, with 231 more people wounded, Afghan officials said.
Daesh group claimed responsibility in a statement posted on the site of its mouthpiece Aamaq news agency, just after the Taliban issued a statement disowning it.
Aamaq said two Daesh militants detonated their explosive vests amid the crowds of minority ethnic Hazaras, who were protesting the route of an electricy transmission line.
Hazaras are predominantly Shiite Muslims, and Daesh views all Shiites as apostates. Shortly before the Daesh statement, the Taliban's spokesman sent an email to media outfits denying any Taliban involvement in the blast.
Mohammad Ismail Kawousi, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, and the Ministry of Interior, said the numbers may still change as many of the wounded were in critical condition.
Graphic television footage from the site of the blasts showed many dead bodies lying on the bloodied road, close to where thousands of Hazara had been demonstrating over the route of a planned multimillion dollar power line.
Emergency vehicles were at the site and wounded were being carried away.
Much of the city center had been sealed off with stacks of shipping containers and other obstacles as the march began earlier on Saturday, and security was tight with helicopters patrolling overhead.
“Opportunist terrorists went among the protesters and set off explosions that killed and wounded a number of our countrymen including security and defense personnel,” President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement.
Saturday’s demonstrators had been demanding the 500 kV transmission line from Turkmenistan to Kabul be rerouted through two provinces with large Hazara populations, an option the government says would cost millions and delay the badly needed project by years.
The Persian-speaking Hazara, a mainly Shia group estimated to make up about 9 percent of the population, are Afghanistan’s third-largest minority but they have long suffered discrimination. Thousands were killed under Taliban rule.
The protest by a group whose leaders include members of the national unity government had put pressure on President Ashraf Ghani, who has faced growing opposition from both inside and outside the government.
It also risked exacerbating ethnic tensions with other groups and provinces the government says would have to wait up to three years for power if the route were changed.
The transmission line, intended to provide secure electricity to 10 provinces is part of the so-called TUTAP project backed by the Asia Development Bank, linking energy-rich states of Central Asia with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Hazaras say they want the line to come through Bamyan and Wardak provinces, west of Kabul, where many Hazaras live, to ensure their power supply.
The government says the project already guarantees ample power to the two provinces and denies it disadvantages Hazara people.
Under current plans, due to be implemented by 2018, the line will pass from a converter station in the northern town of Pul-e Khumri to Kabul through the mountainous Salang pass.
