KABUL — A suicide bomber detonated explosives in a crowd celebrating the Persian New Year in Kabul, on Wednesday, killing 31 and leaving desperate family members searching among bodies and body parts for their loved ones’ remains.

The victims were strewn around the courtyard in front of the Ali Abad Hospital in Kabul, where relatives preparing for burials tried grimly to match trunks with limbs or heads with trunks, and doctors searched for anyone with a pulse.

In one corner, lying face down on a staircase, was a boy of about 12 named Mustafa, who at first glance looked alive. Then it was obvious that one of his legs was blown nearly off; a new black-and-white sneaker remained on the foot. His other leg was nowhere to be seen. For more than an hour no relatives appeared, until finally his mother and father arrived.

The father restrained his wife, trying to prevent her from seeing their son’s gruesome remains; she lashed out in anger. “Why are you alive?’’ she shouted at him. “Mustafa is dead, why are you alive?’’

The bomber struck about noon Wednesday. The explosion happened right outside the hospital: The bomber was apparently stopped before reaching a Shi’ite shrine in the Kart-e Sakhi area of western Kabul, where much larger crowds had gathered.

It was the latest in a fast-growing list of insurgent attacks that have targeted the capital’s Shi’ite, largely ethnic Hazara community, in the past two years.

Both Islamic State and Taliban extremists have claimed more than a dozen attacks on mosques, shrines, schools and rallies in the capital since 2016 — often during religious holidays — in an apparent attempt to sow divisions between Afghan’s majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shi’ite Hazaras.

Nationwide, insurgent attacks on Shi’ite and Hazara targets have claimed at least 275 lives and left more than 700 people wounded in the past two years.

Wednesday’s attack, which wounded more than 60 people, was the second assault on the Sakhi shrine claimed by the Islamic State. In October 2016, gunmen wearing Afghan security uniforms stormed the site, which was filled with worshippers for the Shi’ite day of mourning known as Ashura. They killed 17 people and battled police for several hours.

Wahid Majrooh, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, put Wednesday’s death toll at 31.

The mother of Mustafa ripped off her headscarf in her grief, and rebuffed attempts by her husband and friends to put it back on. Beside herself, she engaged her dead son in desperate conversation. “Mustafa, why have you left me alone? You were so happy to celebrate Nowruz, you so wanted to go. You said to me, ‘Look Mother, you don’t know about style. I have dressed up, and my shirt matches my shoes.’’’ The shirt was also black and white.

In her soliloquy to her dead son, Mustafa’s mother reminded him of his sister, killed in the attack on the Sakhi shrine last year. “When we lost Musqa, you came to me and you said, ‘Look Mother, I am here, don’t worry, I am with you.’ But now, you are not, and what should I do without you?’’

Many of those in the courtyard were furious, yelling at journalists to leave.

Mustafa’s mother spent her ire on President Ashraf Ghani, with a maternal curse: “May God kill your own son so you will understand what it means to lose one.’’

Material from the Washington Post was used in this report.