Girls school blown up

PESHAWAR (AFP) - Militants bombed a girls’ primary school on the outskirts of Peshawar on Friday, the latest
in a series of such attacks blighting the northwest of the country, police said.
The school was badly damaged during the attack in Mattni village, local police official Abdul Ghafoor Afridi told
AFP.
Forty kilograms of explosives were used to raze the building, although some of the structures were left standing,
he added.
“Three rooms and the outer wall of the government-run community model girls primary school was totally
destroyed while the staff room was damaged,” the police official said.
There were no casualties as schools are closed for the summer in Peshawar.
Pakistan has used schools to shelter some of the roughly two million people displaced by a blistering military
operation against armed Taliban hardliners since late April. Fighters in the northwest district of Swat have
destroyed scores of schools, mostly for girls.
Militants have destroyed at least 191 schools in the valley, including 122 girls’ schools, leaving 62,000 pupils
without classrooms, local officials said.
There has been no co-education in Swat for several years and schools have created totally separate sections for
boys and girls. On Thursday, militants blew up a girls’ school in South Waziristan.
On Monday, rebels bombed a school in Peshawar and another in the Bajaur tribal region, where past military
operations have been concentrated.