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An ambulance transports the wounded to hospital after the attack in Kabul.
An ambulance transports the wounded to hospital after the attack in Kabul.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its website.
Comment: 'ISIS' has no 'website'. This claim of responsibility was probably 'found' by SITE Intelligence, the Israeli media coordinator for terrorists.
Militants from Isis have declared war on Afghanistan's Shias, and many of those at the ceremony were from the minority sect. The ceremony commemorated the 1995 slaying of Abdul Ali Mazari, the leader of Afghanistan's ethnic Hazaras, who are mostly Shia Muslims.
The Taliban said they were not involved in the attack, which came less than a week after the US and the group signed an ambitious peace deal that lays out a path for the withdrawal of American forces from the country.
Comment: Throughout this 18-year-long 'war', there has been a third force shooting and bombing both the Taliban and their supporters, and NATO troops and their supporters.
The interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said 32 people were killed and 81 wounded in the attack in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul. The health ministry gave the same death toll but said 58 were wounded. All of the casualties were civilians, Rahimi said.
The opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah, who is the country's chief executive and was a candidate in last year's presidential election, was among several prominent political officials who attended the ceremony but left before the attack.
Several TV journalists were covering the ceremony inside a walled compound when the gunmen began shooting, and a reporter and a cameraman for a local broadcaster were among the wounded.
Karim Khalili, the chief of Afghanistan's high peace council, was delivering a speech when the gunfire interrupted him. He was not hurt and later went on TV to denounce the violence.
Several witnesses said that, amid the panic, members of the security forces at the event had fired on civilians in the crowd. "Individuals with military uniforms who were there targeted people, there were casualties, dead and wounded, said Ghulam Mohammad, a witness, according to Associated Press video.
Another survivor, Noor Mohammad, said: "Everyone was running. Three casualties were on the ground in front of me. I ran out of there to save my life."
After opening fire, the two gunmen fled to a half-finished apartment building, leading to a five-hour standoff with security forces. They were eventually killed and security forces cleared the building, Rahimi said. The area was cordoned off by dozens of security forces.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack in Kabul last year, when a suicide bomber killed 63 people and wounded 182 at a wedding. All were from the Shia Hazara community.
Any US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would be tied to promises by the Taliban to fight terrorism and Isis. During the withdrawal, the US would retain the right to continue counter-terrorism operations in the country.
The Taliban have been fighting Islamic State militants in its headquarters in eastern Afghanistan. US military officials have said Isis has been degraded because of US and Afghan operations but also by Taliban assaults. A US defence department official told the AP that there was concern that Isis was expanding its footprint into Kunar province, where the Taliban knows the terrain and could be an asset in tracking down Isis.
Comment: This is how empires ensure their continued military occupation of foreign countries. The British dealt with a 3-year-long Irish insurgency in the 1970s by setting up death squads that attacked both Protestant and Catholic civilians. As a result they 'had to stay to protect them'.
The Americans in Iraq in the 2000s 'had to stay' when they transformed Iraqi resistance to their invasion into a 'civil war' between Sunni and Shia Iraqis by running death squads who would randomly attack both sub-groups. Same thing in Afghanistan with 'ISIS', a name they've just recently appended to the death squads they've actually been running there for about 15 years: The way it's meant to work in Afghanistan is that they'll send out one of their squads to massacre a bunch of civilians, ideally making it look like a Taliban or Taliban-supported attack. This will then dampen and even break popular support for the Taliban, upon which its fighters have of course relied all these years in order to be able to withstand the most powerful and technologically advanced empire in all history.
But by this point, most people there have figured out the game. That's why there is likely sincerity on the US govt's part to now begin scaling down the 'war'/occupation. They sort of realize that no matter how many iterations of their 'win hearts and minds' psy-ops they undertake, it all just serves to make the target population see them as repulsive psychopaths with whom they want nothing to do with whatsoever.