AT LEAST 48 people, the majority of them students, were killed when a suicide blast ripped through a school in a Shiite area of Kabul Wednesday, officials said, the latest assault on Afghanistan’s war-weary capital.

Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani denounced the “terrorist bombing” and ordered relevant authorities to investigate how the attack happened.

Mr Ghanis says that in “this terrorist bombing once again, the terrorists martyred and wounded the innocent” — students attending a training class in a Shiite neighbourhood of Kabul.

He added that “by targeting educational and cultural centres, terrorists have clearly shown they are against all those Islamic principles (that strive) for both men and women to learn and study.”

Afghanistan’s Public Health Ministry listed the death toll at 48 dead and 67 wounded but

spokesman, Wahid Majroh, said the figures are not final and could rise further.

The bomber targeted a private building in the Shiite neighbourhood of Dasht-i Barcha where a group of young men and women, all high school graduates, were studying for university entrance exams.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, was quick to deny any involvement by the insurgents in the attack.

Both the resurgent Taliban and an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan have targeted Shiites in the past, considering them to be heretics.