Last Update: June 05, 2023, 01:34 AM IST
Since toppling the Western-backed government in Kabul, the Taliban have tightened controls on women’s access to public life, including barring women from university and closing most girls’ high schools. (Reuters/File)
Girls are banned from education beyond the sixth grade, including university, and women are banned from most jobs and public places.
Some 80 girls were poisoned and hospitalized in two separate attacks on their primary schools in northern Afghanistan, a local education official said on Sunday.
It is believed to be the first such attack since the Taliban came to power in August 2021 and began cracking down on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls.
Girls are banned from education beyond the sixth grade, including university, and women are banned from most jobs and public places.
The education officer said the person who administered the poison had personal enmity, but did not elaborate.
The attacks took place on Saturday and Sunday in Sar-e-Pul province.
About 80 female students were poisoned in Sangcharak district, said Mohammad Rahmani, head of the provincial education department. He said 60 students were poisoned at Naswan-e-Kabad Ab School and 17 others were poisoned at Naswan-e-Faizabad School.
“The two elementary schools are close to each other and were targeted one after the other,” he told The Associated Press. “We shifted the students to the hospital and they are all fine now.”
Rahmani said the department’s investigation is ongoing and preliminary inquiries suggest that someone paid third parties to carry out the attacks with malice.
He did not provide any details on how the girls were poisoned or the nature of their injuries. Rahmani did not reveal their age but said they were from class 1 to 6.
Neighboring Iran has been rocked by a wave of poisonings, mostly at girls’ schools, since last November. Thousands of students said they became ill from toxic fumes at these events. But there is no word on who may have been behind the incidents or what – if any – chemicals were used.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – associated Press,
