Targeting education: Girls primary school blown up

SHABQADAR:

A girls primary school was blown up by unidentified militants in Sro Kalay, Shabqadar near the Charsadda-Mohmand border in the early hours of Saturday.

Police official Wilayat Khan said the incident took place at about 1am, adding the culprits planted around five kilogrammes of explosives inside Girl Primary School, Kodai Shabqadar. One room and a verandah of the two-room structure were destroyed. Police have started a search operation but no one has yet been arrested.

This is the 25th school to have been blown up in the locality in five years. In the adjacent Mohmand Agency, around 120 schools have been targeted in six years.

Separately, three bombs were defused in Charsadda on Friday evening. An eight-kilogramme device was defused near Shabqadar police station and the PTCL exchange, another 200-gramme device was defused in Utmanzai while a third device was decommissioned under a bridge on the Peshawar-Islamabad Motorway in the jurisdiction of Nisatta police station, said bomb disposal unit official Kiramat Shah.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 3^rd, 2014.