Afghanistan declares day of mourning after university terror attack

KABUL:The Afghan government announced Tuesday as a national day of mourning as a tribute to the 22 victims who lost their lives during a terror attack at the Kabul University a day earlier.

The Afghan flag will fly at half-mast across the country and at all diplomatic missions around the world, TOLO News quoted the Presidential Palace as saying.

In a message on the attack, that also injured over 20 others, President Ashraf Ghani said: "The enemies of knowledge and progress continued to terrorize our people and perpetrated a vicious terrorist attack on Kabul University.

"We convey a clear message to all terrorist groups including Taliban that such acts of terror and atrocity can never deter the resolve of the great Afghan nation for a peaceful, stable and thriving Afghanistan.

"We will take revenge for this senseless attack and for any drop of innocent students' blood spilled today. Our heroic defence and security forces will chase you, find you at any corner and wipe you out.

"I enunciate to the brutal enemies of Afghanistan that this attack will not remain without response; we will retaliate," the President added.

A group of militants stormed the Kabul University, one of the biggest higher education institutions in the country, on Monday morning after detonating explosive devices.

They entered the university campus and began indiscriminate shooting.

The carnage ended after six hours when all three attackers were killed, according to the Interior Affairs Ministry, TOLO News reported.

The other 19 victims were mostly students, it added.

This was the second attack on an education institution in the Afghan capital in the last 10 days.

A week ago, a suicide bombing near a tutoring centre killed over 30 people, most of them students.