President declares day of mourning after bomb attack

But ISIS has never succeeded in attacking the capital city, until now.

Ghani confirmed that one of three suicide bombers, who had joined demonstrators at the mass rally on Saturday, had been gunned down by security forces before he could detonate his explosives.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the blast, which comes in the middle of the Taliban’s annual summer offensive.

The National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency, said the attack was masterminded by Abu Ali, an IS commander in Nangarhar’s volatile Achin district.

The photographs were released by the sympathizers of the terror group on Twitter social media a day after the attack left at least 80 people dead.

A suicide bomber hit a large demonstration by members of Afghanistans Hazara minority in Kabul on Saturday. Most of the population is Sunni. “Two fighters of the Islamic State detonated their explosive belts in a gathering of Shiites in…”

The attack appears to be the single deadliest attack in Kabul to be claimed by IS jihadists, who are making steady inroads in the country and challenging the Taliban on their own turf.

President Ashraf Ghani vowed in a televised speech to bring the perpetrators to justice.

An Afghan official says the death toll in the bombing of a mass protest in Kabul has risen to 61.

On Saturday, Afghan President had said he was deeply saddened over the incident. They have by and large supported Ghani’s government, which includes some of their senior leaders, but many complain their support has not been returned.

At least 80 people have been killed in two suicide bombings at a march in the Afghan capital Kabul, officials say.

The attack prompted growing fear about security in the country since it also marked the first time the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group has staged such carnage in Kabul. During the late 1990s, when the Taliban regime held power in Kabul and most of the country, it banned Shiite religious holidays in public.

One march organiser, Laila Mohammadi, said she arrived at the scene soon after the blast and saw “many dead and wounded people”.

The Afghan Interior Ministry, in a statement, reported the casualties and said 231 had been wounded in the blasts. The protest leaders said the government remained rife with “systematic bias” against the Hazaras and had routed the electricity transmission line elsewhere, depriving the central Afghan region not only of electricity, but also of the roads and other infrastructure that would come with it.

Roadblocks that had been set up overnight to prevent the marchers accessing the city center or the presidential palace hampered efforts to transfer some of the wounded to hospitals, witnesses said.