Pakistan: Major Blast Rocks Government School In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Multiple Rooms Destroyed; No Group Claims Responsibility

Unknown miscreants bombed a government high school in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwest Pakistan early Friday, local police said. The "miscreants" blew up the government high school using explosives in Akbari village in the jurisdiction of the Gul Imam police station in Tank district, news agency PTI reported citing police sources, adding, that several rooms of the school collapsed due to the explosion.

No group has claimed responsibility for the school bombing as yet. However, splinter groups of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) active in Tank district are against girls' education and usually target their schools.

450 schools destroyed

According to data collected by local NGOs, over 450 schools in the province have been destroyed in such attacks over last decade, forcing students to either stop attending schools or attend classes next to ruined buildings or the rubble. Pakistan witnessed multiple attacks on girls' schools until 2019, especially in the Swat Valley and elsewhere in the northwest where the Pakistani Taliban long controlled the former tribal regions.

In 2012, the insurgents attacked Malala Yousafzai, a teenage student and advocate for the education of girls, who later went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Militants blow up govt girls' school

Earlier last year in July, a similar incident was reported where militants blew up a government girl's school in a tribal district in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. There was, however, no loss of life in the explosion. The militants blew up the Govt Girls Middle School in North Waziristan tribal district, bordering Afghanistan, on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Minister Faisal Khan Tarakai said. Seven rooms of the school were razed to the ground in the blast.

A total of 255 girls were enrolled in the school. Tarakai said the school would be made functional soon. "Such cowardly acts cannot deter our resolve of education promotion in tribal areas. Provision of education is the top priority of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government," he said.

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The Taliban and its component bodies are opposed to female education and held it as un-Islamic. In a similar incident in May, a private girls’ school was blown up by unidentified militants in Tehsil Shewa of North Waziristan district.

(With inputs from agency)