A mourning procession of Shiites moved Monday from one mosque to another in the west of Kabul to commemorate the Ashura festivity linked with the death in the seventh century of Prophet Mohammad's grandson imam Husein. The latter was murdered in a clash with a detachment of the rival dynasty of khalifs (who ruled in Damascus). The cult of Husein is revered both by Shiites and Sunnites, the second leading trend in Islam.
When the procession passed the building of the college, Sunnite cadets stirred up an argument which grew into a fight (more than 90 percent of the population of Afghanistan profess Sunnism of the Hanafi trend considered to be moderate unlike that of the Hanbali kind which gave rise in the 18th century in Saudi Arabia to its radical form of Wahhabism, a reaction to harassment of the Arabs by the Osman empire.) The Orthodox Sunnites and Taliban fundamentalists consider the Shiites to be heretics.
There is witness evidence that a grenade was thrown from a crowd of Shiites at college cadets, killing with its fragments one person and injuring more than 15. The wounded have been delivered to hospital.
The Shiite sect in Afghanistan incorporates mostly the Hazara people living in the central part of the country.
