Death toll rises to 53 in Kabul suicide bombing

Forty-six girls and young women were among those killed in a suicide bombing on an Afghan education centre last week, the UN said today as it announced the total death toll had risen to 53.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on Friday next to women at a gender-segregated study hall packed with hundreds of students sitting a practice test for university admissions.

The attack happened in a Kabul neighbourhood home to the historically oppressed Shiite Muslim Hazara community, which has been subjected to some of the worst violence in the country's recent history.