Blasts at School in Kabul: Families bury victims as death toll hits 68

The death toll from an explosion outside a school in Afghanistan's capital Kabul has risen to 68, Afghan officials said yesterday, with doctors struggling to provide medical care to 165 injured and officials trying to identify bodies. 

Multiple blasts on Saturday evening shook the neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, home to a large community of Shia from the Hazara ethnic minority which has been targeted in the past by Islamic State militants.

At first a car bomb was detonated in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school on Saturday, and when the students rushed out in panic, two more bombs exploded. Officials said most of those killed were school girls. Some families were still searching hospitals for their missing children.

Two shocked school girls stand near the site. Photo: Reuters

The Taliban denied involvement in the attack.

Families of the victims blamed the Afghan government and Western powers for failing to put an end to violence and the ongoing war.

Bodies were still being collected from morgues as the first burials were conducted in the west of the city. Some families were still searching for missing relatives yesterday, gathering outside hospitals to read names posted on the walls, and checking morgues.

"The entire night we carried bodies of young girls and boys to a graveyard and prayed for everyone wounded in the attack," said Mohammed Reza Ali, who has been helping families of the victims at a private hospital.

"Why not just kill all of us to put and end to this war?" he said.