Poison attack on Afghan girls' school

Militants have been blamed after 90 schoolchildren were poisoned in the third attack on a girls' school in three weeks. The pupils were lining up outside their classrooms for morning assembly when one girl suddenly collapsed unconscious. "She was only little," Gulcheena, a 13-year-old pupil who herself fell ill moments later, told Associated Press news agency.

They were among 90 Afghan school girls rushed to hospital yesterday unconscious and vomiting, possibly victims of a gas poisoning attack on their school in Mahmud Raqi village. "The teachers picked her up and carried her to the school office," Gulcheena said. "We went into our class and the teacher was calling the roll call when suddenly she told us to go outside." Five of the girls from the Qazaam school admitted to hospital, slipped briefly into comas, officials in Kapisa province, north-east of the capital, said. Six teachers and at least two other staff were also admitted. One of the teachers, Zakira, collapsed in front of her students. The headmistress, Mossena, said a strange smell engulfed the courtyard as girls began retching uncontrollably. Medics said most of the victims were between eight and 12 years-old.

It was the third such attack against a girls' school in Afghanistan in as many weeks, raising fears that the Taliban are resorting to increasingly vicious methods to terrorise young women out of education. Police officials blamed Taliban sympathisers but the insurgents' spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid denied any involvement. "Harming children is not the work of holy warriors," he said. "We absolutely reject this."

Police chief, Matiullah Safi, said none of the students, teachers or support staff had seen anything suspicious. "It looks like something was sprayed in the school but so far no one has been arrested," he said. "There's no proof, at the moment, that this was an attack." But the alleged poisoning comes just days after girls at a school in nearby Charikar, on the road north of Kabul, complained of similar symptoms.

Last November, men on motorbikes used water pistols to squirt acid in girls' faces as they walked to school on the outskirts of Kandahar. More than a dozen girls and several teachers at the Mirwais School for Girls had the acid thrown in their faces and one was so badly disfigured she had to go abroad for treatment. Women's education was banned under the Taliban, and girls' schools are routinely torched or closed in areas where the insurgents hold sway.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children