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| India-Pakistan |
| Militants dynamite schools in Khyber |
| 2009-12-10 |
| [Dawn] Taliban militants on Wednesday dynamited two boys' schools in Pakistan's Khyber district, where troops are pressing an offensive against insurgents, an official said. The attacks took place in Bara town, about 20 kilometres south of the regional capital Peshawar, with most of the buildings reduced to rubble but no one injured in the blasts in the early hours of the morning. Pakistan is currently in the grip of a fierce Taliban insurgency, with 68 people killed in bombs across the country in the past three days alone as militants avenge multiple operations against them in the lawless northwest. 'Both main school buildings were completely destroyed,' said Shafeerullah Wazir, the top administrative official of Khyber district, adding that only two classrooms remained standing in the adjacent schools. Wazir said that militants buried large quantities of dynamite around the outer walls of the government-run high school and primary school. 'Both Taliban and Lashkar-i-Islam people are involved in this act,' he said. Troops launched an offensive in Khyber district -- which straddles Peshawar and Afghanistan -- in September to try and flush out both the Taliban and home-grown militant group Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam). Bara is close to Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, which has been hit by a series of bombings in recent months, with a suicide blast on October 28 killing 125 people in the worst attack in two years. Militants opposed to co-education have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years. Nearly 200 schools were destroyed in the Swat valley alone during a two-year Taliban uprising to enforce sharia law in a district once favoured by Western tourists for its ski slopes and bracing mountain air. Pakistan's military is engaged in offensives against fighters across much of the northwest including the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, a region branded by Washington as the most dangerous place on earth. About 30,000 troops poured into South Waziristan in mid October to try and dismantle the strongholds of the Taliban leadership, enraging militants who have responded with a surge in bomb blasts and attacks. On Monday, blasts in Peshawar and Lahore killed 59 people, then on Tuesday two suicide attackers detonated a car bomb near the offices of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence in eastern Multan, killing nine. A fierce insurgency has killed more than 2,670 people in attacks in Pakistan mostly blamed on the Taliban in the last two-and-a-half years. |
| Posted by:Fred |