A suicide bombing attack has killed at least 17 people and many injured outside an educational center in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Their Courses were conducted for the students engaged in higher education in those private institutions.

The Afghan Interior Ministry said the bomber struck shortly afternoon.

There are usually hundreds of students in the Shia Muslim-dominated Dashte-Barchi area. Many injured in the attack have been taken to hospital. The death toll is expected to rise.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a post on its social media channel but did not show any evidence of involvement.

Earlier, the Taliban denied any involvement in the attack.

“A suicide bomber tried to break into an educational institution,” a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry told AFP.

He said the bomber “did not allow security guards to enter and detonated a bomb.”

Ali Reza, a local resident told AFP that all those injured and killed were students waiting to enter the institution.

“I was standing 100 meters away from the institution and suddenly there was a huge explosion,” he said.

 

This type of violence has escalated in Afghanistan in recent weeks, with the Taliban behind most of the attacks.

The violence is expected to disrupt ongoing peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

Afghanistan’s Shia community has been attacked in the past by radical Sunni Muslim groups such as the Islamic State group, which views Shia Islam as anti-Islamic.

This is not the first time an educational institution has been attacked in Afghanistan.

In August 2016, 48 people most of them teenagers were killed in a suicide bombing attack during a class at an education center in Kabul. The Islamic State also claimed responsibility for the attack.

In May of this year, 24 women and children, including newborns were killed in a gun attack on a maternity ward at a hospital in Kabul.

Earlier this week, 11 children were killed in an airstrike on a religious school in the northern Afghan province of Takhar.