In Afghanistan, two separate attacks at a primary school on Saturday and Sunday left 80 schoolgirls poisoned and hospitalized.
Mohammad Rahmani, the chairman of the province education department, stated that the poisonings happened in the Sangcharak district of northern Afghanistan.
Rahmani stated that the person behind the poisoning had a personal vendetta but he did not elaborate.
According to an Afghan education official, 60 children were poisoned at Naswan-e-Kabod Aab school while 17 others were poisoned at Naswan-e-Faizabad school.
“Both primary schools are near to each other and were targeted one after the other,” Rahmani said. “We shifted the students to the hospital and now they are all fine.” he added.
This to be the first of such assault since the Taliban seized control in August 2021 and launched a crackdown on Afghan women’s and girls’ rights and liberties.
Girls have been prevented from continuing their education past the sixth grade, including university, and women are barred from most employment and public settings.
Since the restriction on women’s education, hundreds of thousands of girls and young women have lived in terror and repression since the Taliban’s took over.
Investigations are still ongoing, but preliminary findings indicate that someone with a grudge paid a third party to carry out the attacks, according to Rahmani.
He did not say how the girls were poisoned or the extent of their ailments, and he did not reveal their ages, only that they were in classes one through six.
