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Insurgents torch school in Afghanistan

* Burn classrooms, books and offices of co-ed institution in Kandahar

KANDAHAR: Militants set ablaze a secondary school in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar on Friday, authorities said, in at least the third attack on educational institutes this year.

Gunmen set fire to classrooms, books and offices at the Mian Abdul Hakim school for boys and girls, said Mohammad Anwar, head of the Kandahar province Education Department. “They burnt to ash everything, the building, books and chairs,” he told AFP. More than 1,200 students study at the school, including up to 200 girls, said Anwar.

He blamed the attack on “enemies of Afghanistan,” a term often used to refer to Taliban insurgents.

In a similar incident on January 31, militants burned down a primary school in the province of Logar, near Kabul. On January 1, a newly built school for refugee children was torched in the eastern Nangarhar province.

The tactic appears to be intended to disrupt progress in education, apparently one of the most successful sectors of the post-Taliban government’s largely Western-funded reconstruction. The Education Ministry said in January that the Taliban had burned down 183 schools and killed 61 teachers and students in the past 18 months.

Attacks by the insurgents had also closed down nearly 400 schools and deprived around 300,000 children from access to education, it added.

The British charity Oxfam said in November that nearly seven million Afghan children were still not in school although nearly the same number were enrolled. afp

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