Targeted attacks: Three schools blown up in Mohmand, Swabi

Man injured while trying to save school building from destruction.

SHABQADAR:

Unidentified militants destroyed three government schools in Mohmand Agency and Swabi district on Wednesday.

According to a political administration official in Mohmand Agency, Rasool Khan, two primary schools for boys were blown up by unidentified assailants at around 2am on Wednesday in Ghalanai. The primary schools were located nearly one kilometre south of Ghalanai.

Soon after the explosions, security forces launched a search operation. According to a tribesman, both the schools were completely destroyed.

An official of the Ghalanai education department said that after these incidents, the total number of destroyed schools in the agency had reached 108. In total, around 500 schools have so far been destroyed in the tribal belt. Till the filing of this report no one had yet claimed responsibility for the fresh attacks.

The political administration official said that international donor agencies were yet to decide about the reconstruction of the schools. In some areas where schools have not been rebuilt yet, classes are being conducted in tents.

Meanwhile, a government primary school for boys in Wisalabad, Swabi was blown up when explosives planted by unidentified assailants exploded around midnight. Lahor DSP Asghar Khan told The Express Tribune that the boundary wall of the school was destroyed.

Man injured trying to save school

A man was severely injured on Tuesday while trying to save a school from being blown up by removing explosive materials from the site.

Explosives had been planted in a bucket in a boys primary school in the Narangmal area of the Serai Naurang tehsil, around 30 kilometres north of Lakki Marwat.

Serai Naurang police official Gul Rauf Khan said that Munir Khan from Kotka Zafran was on his way to his fields at around 7:30am when he saw a suspicious bucket lying next to the boundary wall of the school. As he picked it up, it exploded and critically injured him.

While he was being taken to Tehsil Headquarters Hospitals by residents, he told people that he saw another bucket in the building.

Munir was later referred to District Headquarters Hospital in Bannu by doctors at the tehsil hospital.

The bomb disposal squad (BDS) managed to defuse the 10-kilogramme bomb in the bucket.

Police official Gul also said that the school’s watchman, Qayyum, was absent from duty at the time of the incident. “He is a hunter and had gone to hunt quails at the time,” he said. An FIR was registered against the unidentified assailants.

Additional reporting from our correspondents in Swabi and Lakki Marwat.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2012.