During a peaceful protest in Kabul demanding the expansion of Aghanistan’s power grid to rural communities, Sunni fighters claimed by the Islamic State detonated suicide vests, murdering at least 80 Shiite protesters and injuring at least 230 more:

At least 80 people were killed and more than 230 wounded Saturday when attackers detonated explosives amid a huge crowd of peaceful protesters in the Afghan capital, most of them from the country’s Shiite ethnic Hazara minority, Afghan officials said.

Spokesmen for the Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for the attack at a traffic circle jammed with demonstrators, according to Afghan media. The group’s media office said two Islamic State fighters detonated suicide belts among the crowd, in two separate bombings.

The death toll was the highest for any terrorist attack in the capital after more than a decade of fighting between Taliban militants and Afghan and NATO forces. If indeed carried out by the Islamic State, known as Daesh in Afghanistan, it would be the first major urban attack in the country by the radical Sunni terrorist group and could signal its first deliberate effort to target Afghanistan’s Shiite minority, which it views as infidels.

Please signal boost. Pay your respects to the victims in your preferred methods. These were lives like any other exercising their tenuous democratic rights.

-Shiv