A Pakistani primary school for girls was destroyed Monday in the country’s Khyber district, near Peshawar, which is in the western region bordering Afghanistan. No one was injured in the bombing, but reports indicate that explosives planted and detonated around the building destroyed all five school rooms. According to the Daily Mail, at least 4 girls’ schools and 6 schools total have been destroyed in the Khyber region, which is the main land bridge between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Rahim Gul Khattak, a senior Pakistani government official, told the Agence France Presse, “They are Taliban. They are the same people who do not want children to get an education.”
In Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, violence against schools that educate girls has been part of campaigns against the education of women. In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, more than 130 primarily all girl schools have been destroyed in the past year, allegedly by the Taliban. In total, hundreds of schools have been destroyed in Pakistan’s northwest region over the past several years. During the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which lasted until 2001, Afghan girls were forbidden to attend school. To date, approximately 1,000 girls’ or co-educational schools have been bombed or burned in Afghanistan. Attacks on girls’ schools in Pakistan have increased in recent months.
