A grenade blast near a school complex in the Afghan capital wounds at least 42 children, the UN says

KABUL, Afghanistan: An explosion near a school complex in the Afghan capital of Kabul wounded at least 42 children, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The UN political mission in Afghanistan confirmed the injuries near the education centre and said the children are between 9 and 14 years old, according to UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Earlier, Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said that “a number of children” had been wounded by a hand grenade on Monday, and that an investigation was underway.

He did not provide further details.

The UN mission known as UNAMA also called for an investigation to establish the circumstances of the explosion, Dujarric said.

Richard Bennett, the UN's independent investigator for Afghanistan, on Tuesday condemned the “heinous attack harming numerous children near a school."

Afghan media had said that around 50 children were hurt in the blast, which occurred in a part of Kabul populated mainly by the Hazara ethnic minority, which makes up around 9% of the Afghan population and has long suffered attacks and persecution.

Most Hazaras are Shiite Muslims, and they have been targeted repeatedly in the past by Sunni Muslim radicals like the Islamic State group. They have also faced discrimination in the Sunni majority country.

In May 2021, a few months before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in the wake of a chaotic withdrawal of US-led troops, three bombings at a school in Kabul killed dozens of people, all of them from the Hazara community. Most of them were young girls leaving class.

That school, like the school complex where Monday's explosion took place, was in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, the main Hazara district in the Afghan capital.

In a social media post on X, Bennett said an independent investigation to bring those responsible to justice was essential. “Once again this mainly Hazara part of Kabul has been targeted. Deplorable!” he wrote.

The UN humanitarian office noted that schooling in Afghanistan already faces challenges, with girls denied access to education beyond the sixth grade, Dujarric said. In addition, around two-thirds of the 900,000 children who returned to Afghanistan, mostly from neighbouring Pakistan — some 600,000 youngsters — remain out of school.

The UN and its humanitarian partners are supporting children’s education, but Dujarric said their efforts have been limited by continued underfunding.