Nearly 80 Afghan school girls poisoned in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan

The anti-women tyranny in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan fiddled to another low as nearly 80 girls were poisoned and hospitalised in two separate attacks at their primary schools in northern Afghanistan's Sar-e-Pul province on June 4.

A local education official confirmed the set of poisoning incidentsto Associated Press.The education official said the person who orchestrated the poisoning had a personal grudge but did not elaborate.

According to Mohammad Rahmani, who heads the provincial education department, a total of 80 female students were poisoned in Sangcharak district of Sar-e-Pul.

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He said 60 students were poisoned in Naswan-e-Kabod Aab School and 17 others were poisoned in Naswan-e-Faizabad School.

"Both primary schools are near to each other and were targeted one after the other," he told Associated Press. "We shifted the students to hospital and now they are all fine."

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After replacing democratically-elected President Ashraf Ghani's governmentin Kabul in August 2021, the globally unrecognised Taliban government has made it a matter of policy to erode rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls. But it is for the first time that a poisoning assault akin to the ones reported in Iran in recent months has been reported in Afghanistan.

The Taliban banned girls from attending schools beyond sixth grade shortly after they came to power. In December 2022, the government banned women from attending university as well.

WION had reached out Afghan women living under Taliban's tyranny who described harrowing scenes of ouster from classrooms and universities in December 2022.

The department's investigation is ongoing and initial inquiries show that someone with a grudge paid a third party to carry out the attacks, Rahmani said.

He gave no information on how the girls were poisoned or the nature of their injuries. Rahmani did not give their ages but said they were in grades 1 to 6.

(With inputs from agencies)

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