Militants blow up school in Peshawar

Police says militants planted explosives in school building, which went off around midnight, destroying two rooms.

PESHAWAR: Suspected militants blew up a government-run primary school for boys within the precincts of Badabher police station late Friday, as informed by the police.

Police said that the militants planted explosives in the school building, which went off around midnight, destroying two rooms of the school. An official of the Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU) said that around five kilograms of explosives were used in the attack. Earlier in the morning, BDU personnel defused another bomb that weighed around five kilograms. This was the third educational institution attacked in Peshawar this month.

Earlier on October 8, Taliban militants blew up a girls primary school in Mashokhel village, while on the same day another school was bombed in the Sheikhan village close to the border of the Khyber Agency.

Attacks on educational institutions in the provincial capital have surged during the past few months.

Six educational institutions were bombed in the provincial capital alone during the past month. According to the official figures, at least 19 educational institutions have been attacked in the provincial capital over the past 19 months.

Professor Dr Fazl Rahim Marwat, an analyst and author of the book ‘Talibanisation’, perceives these attacks as a tactic being used by the militants to pressurise the authorities.

Marwat told The Express Tribune that since both Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA are governed from Peshawar, militants want to pressurise the authorities by attacking schools in the darkness of the night. He added that attacks on schools directly impact families and causes public outrage which the militants capitalise on.

Marwat categorically stated that such attacks will persist as long as the sanctuaries of the terrorists continue to exist in the tribal areas, adding the attacks will cease with the ultimate defeat of the militants.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2010.