Teacher beheaded, say officials

2006-01-04 12:47

Noor Khan

Kandahar - Suspected Taliban militants have beheaded a teacher in a central Afghan town, the latest in a string of attacks on teachers and schools in the volatile region, officials said on Wednesday.

The decapitated body of Malim Abdul Habib was found in his home in Qalat on Wednesday, said Ali Khail, a local government spokesman.

Assailants were believed to have killed him late on Tuesday after breaking into the house.

Habib was a teacher at Shaikh Mathi Baba School, which is attended by both sexes.

Zabul province's education director Nabi Khushal blamed the Taliban for the killing.

"Only the Taliban are against girls being educated," he said.

Khushal said that in the past year insurgents had occasionally put up posters around Qalat, demanding that girls' schools be closed and threatening to kill teachers.

Attacks on girls schools

He said 100 of the province's 170 registered schools were closed, mostly in outlying districts, because of poor security.

Of the 35 000 students attending schools in Zabul, only 2 700 were girls, he said.

There has been a spate of attacks on girls schools and teachers across Afghanistan since United States-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001.

The former regime prohibited girls from attending school as part of its widely criticised drive to establish what it considered a "pure" Islamic state.

Hundreds of thousands of girls have returned to school since the Taliban was ousted, but opposition remains in conservative areas of rural Afghanistan.

In the past year, the Taliban have stepped up attacks against government targets, particularly in the south and east.

This has triggered the deadliest fighting with joint Afghan government-US coalition forces since the hard-line movement was ousted.

- SAPA