islamabad: Suspected militants have bombed a girls’ school in northwestern Pakistan, sparking new fears for the safety of girls who have long been targets of Islamist education.
A bomb exploded on Wednesday night in a North Waziristan town near the Afghan border, partially damaging the premises of a private school, local police official Amjad Suhail said.
There were no fatalities or injuries.
The mountain town of North Waziristan has long served as a headquarters for Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda and its affiliate, the Afghan Taliban’s Haqqani network. Pakistan’s military drove the Haqqani network from its territory in a series of attacks that began in 2014.
The Pakistani Taliban, a group that follows the same hardline Islamic faith as the Afghan Taliban, but with a different organization, have previously bombed girls’ schools.
Hundreds of schools were bombed in Waziristan and Swat, the hometown of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, between 2007 and 2009 when the Pakistani Taliban ruled these areas.
In 2012, when Yousafzai was 15, Taliban militants climbed on top of her school bus and shot her in the head for openly opposing Taliban restrictions on girls’ education.
The latest incident in North Waziristan was the first such incident in a year to target a girls’ school. “Fear has increased,” said Ali Wazir, a former local lawmaker.
The Pakistani Taliban, who have killed around 80,000 people in years of violence, have been seeking a comeback since Kabul fell to Afghan forces in 2021.
