Girls' school blown up
2009-06-26 11:28
Peshawar - Militants bombed a girls' primary school on the outskirts of Pakistan's Peshawar city on Friday, the latest in a series of such attacks blighting the northwest of the country, police said.
The school was badly damaged during the attack in Mattni village, local police official Abdul Ghafoor Afridi told AFP.
Forty kilogrammes of explosives were used to raze the building, although some of the structures were left standing, he added.
"Three rooms and the outer wall of the government-run community model girls primary school was totally destroyed while the staff room was damaged," the police official said.
There were no casualties as schools are closed for the summer in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan.
Pakistan has used schools to shelter some of the roughly two million people displaced by a blistering military operation against armed Taliban hardliners since late April.
Fighters in the northwest district of Swat, where the military assault has concentrated, have destroyed scores of schools, mostly for girls, during a two-year campaign to enforce sharia law.
Militants have destroyed at least 191 schools in the valley, including 122 girls' schools, leaving 62 000 pupils without classrooms, local officials said.
There has been no co-education in Swat for several years and schools have created totally separate sections for boys and girls.
On Thursday, militants blew up a girls' school in South Waziristan, a tribal region that falls outside direct government control and where a full-scale army offensive is expected against Pakistan's Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud.
On Monday, rebels bombed a school in Peshawar and another in the Bajaur tribal region, where past military operations have been concentrated.
- SAPA