Taliban: 10 Killed in Bombing of Afghan Religious School

A wounded man receives treatment at a hospital after a deadly bomb blast at a religious school in Aybak, the capital of the Samangan province in northern Afghanistan, on Nov. 30, 2022. Saifullah Karimi/AP Photo

ISLAMABAD—A bomb blast hit a religious school in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least 10 students, a Taliban representative said.

Video distributed by the Taliban terrorist group to the media showed the blast site, a hall littered with debris, mats, and shoes, with dead bodies and bloodstains on the floor. Sirens can be heard in the background and men, some of them armed, move through the hall surveying the explosion’s aftermath.

A wounded man receives treatment at a hospital after a deadly bomb blast at a religious school in Aybak, the capital of the Samangan province in northern Afghanistan, on Nov. 30, 2022. Saifullah Karimi/AP Photo

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said a number of students were wounded in the attack. Samangan province has a majority population of ethnic Uzbeks.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But the Afghan affiliate of the ISIS terrorist group has been waging a campaign of violence that escalated since the Taliban took power in August 2021.

ISIS has carried out bombings targeting in particular Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslim minority but has also targeted Sunni mosques and madrassas, especially ones connected to the Taliban. The Taliban and the ISIS both adhere to a hard-line ideology but are bitter rivals.