On Monday, gunmen disguised as policemen stormed Kabul University in the Afghan capital, resulting in an hour-long assault, killing at least 19 people and wounding 22 or more, including students who jumped out of windows to flee the attackers.
It is the second attack on a learning center in Kabul in recent days, and comes amid a spike in violence across the country.
The assault coincided with a book fair that attracted senior Afghan and Iranian officials to the sprawling campus, including Iranian Ambassador Bahador Aminian. It was not immediately clear whether any of the officials were killed or wounded.
But it seems students were targeted in the well-coordinated attack. A 22-year-old public administration student said she heard a deafening blast. Then, “I saw with my own eyes, there were a lot of attackers in police uniforms,” said Nilofer Farahmand, according to a report by NPR.
The assailants rushed to the law internship center, where she was in class. Someone yelled at students to flee, she said. Later, she learned on a WhatsApp group that gunmen had taken two classes hostage, and opened fire on the students and teachers.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack, the second it has carried out in Kabul in less than 10 days, after a suicide bomber late last month blew himself up outside an education center, killing more than 20 people, including many students.
ISIS also claimed responsibility for that attack – which was effectively a copy-cat of a 2018 attack by the extremist group on an education center that killed dozens of teenagers who were studying for university entrance exams.
The ISIS claim says two of its fighters attacked a group of graduating judges and investigators with their weapons and gunfire. They claim they hit 80 people who had rejected Islam.
Meanwhile, the Taliban denied responsibility, and suggested that Afghan officials were behind the violence. The accusation reflected the sour mood between the insurgents and the Afghan government: They have been engaged in peace talks since mid-September in the Gulf state of Qatar.