Acid attack on Afghan schoolgirls; 15 hurt

KANDAHAR (AFP) - Attackers used a water pistol to spray acid at schoolgirls in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar Wednesday, hurting 15 of them, three seriously, the education ministry said. Two teenage sisters were badly injured in the attack, one of them told an AFP reporter at a hospital in the city, which has suffered a series of assassinations and bombings by the radical Taliban movement.

 “We were on the way to school when two men on motorbikes stopped next to us. One of them threw acid on my sister’s face. I tried to help her and then they threw acid on me too,” 16-year-old Atefa said.