Militants torched two mixed-sex schools near the Afghan capital, police said yesterday, and the Taliban said it had kidnapped two teachers and a school superintendent.| Knowledge is un-Islamic. |
At one school, they beat and tied up the superintendent and set fire to the eight-classroom building, Logar deputy provincial police chief Abdul Majeed Latifi told AFP. The roof collapsed and windows, doors and furniture were badly damaged, he said.
At roughly the same time, attackers set fire to a nearby school. The blaze was put out by residents and police and only the principal's office and one classroom were affected, Latifi said. "This was also a mixed boys and girls school, where girls study in the morning and boys in the afternoon," he said.
Afghanistan's education system has been under attack for years with most incidents blamed on the Islamist Taliban, which denied girls education during its 1996-2001 grip on power and is today fighting the new government. Violence left 220 pupils and teachers dead in 2007, the education ministry said last month.
| They're easier to kill than soldiers. |
In a separate incident, gunmen captured a school superintendent near the south-central town of Ghazni late Sunday and two male teachers, the provincial government said. Chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said loyalists of his militia had captured the three. Police said Tuesday the men were still missing.