DERA ISMAIL KHAN – Militants set off an explosive device at a girls school in a former stronghold of the Taliban in Pakistan’s volatile northwest, causing significant damage to the building, police reported Thursday. Fortunately, no injuries were reported in the overnight assault.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack late Wednesday, which targeted the sole girls school in Shawa, a town located in the North Waziristan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan, stated local police chief Amjad Wazir.
UNICEF condemned the bombing as a “despicable and cowardly act that could jeopardize the future of many young and talented girls.”
According to the police chief, the assailants assaulted the school guard before triggering the explosives at the Aafia Islamic Girls Model School, a private institution serving 150 students.
Suspicion naturally points towards Islamic militants, particularly the Pakistani Taliban, who have previously targeted girls schools in the province, arguing against female education.
In a statement, Abdullah Fadil, the UNICEF representative in Pakistan, denounced the “destruction of a girls’ school in a remote and underserved area” as a severe setback to national progress. He referenced Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s declaration of an education emergency on Wednesday, pledging to address the enrollment of 26 million out-of-school children.
Until 2019, Pakistan experienced numerous attacks on girls schools, notably in the Swat Valley and other parts of the northwest under the Pakistani Taliban’s control. In 2012, insurgents targeted Malala Yousafzai, a teenage student and advocate for girls’ education, who later received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Although the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), have been ousted from Swat and other regions in recent years, they remain closely aligned with the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.
The Taliban’s ascendancy in neighboring Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban.
