Taliban Poisons 120 School Girls in Latest Attack Against Education скачать в хорошем качестве

Taliban Poisons 120 School Girls in Latest Attack Against Education

More than Afghan 120 schoolgirls and three teachers have been poisoned in the second attack in many months blamed on conservative radicals in the country's north, Afghan police and education officials said on Wednesday (May 23) Victims of the poisoning were being treated in hospital after the attack on a school in Taliqan inTakhar Province. One of the poisoned schoolgirls who gave her name as Samera gave details of the ordeal. "We saw one of the students was unconscious and in bad condition we were told not to drink water but we had already drunk the water and we became unconscious too," she said. The attack occurred in Takhar province where police said that radicals opposed to education of women and girls had used an unidentified toxic powder to contaminate the air in classrooms. Scores of students were left unconscious. "There was a certain smell that our students noticed, unfortunately as a result some of our students were poisoned and the recent report showed that 80 of our students were poisoned,"Abdul Wahab Zafari head of Takhar education departmentAfghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), says the Taliban appear intent on closing schools ahead of a 2014 withdrawal by foreign combat troops. Afghanistan's Ministry of Education said last week that 550 schools in 11 provinces where the Taliban have strong support had been closed down by insurgents. Last month, 150 schoolgirls were poisoned in Takhar province after they drank contaminated water. Since 2001 when the Taliban were toppled from power by U.S.-backed Afghan forces, females have returned to schools, especially in the capital Kabul. They were previously banned from work and education. But there are still periodic attacks against students, teachers and school buildings, usually in the more conservative south and east of the country, from where the Taliban insurgency draws most of its support.