A bomb ripped through a girls school in a Chilas village, marking the eighth attack on such schools in less than a week, police said on Thursday. The deputy commissioner of Diamer said a dynamite planted by unidentified people exploded in a primary school in Takia village of Chilas, 120-kilometres south of Gilgit around 2:00am on Thursday. He said nobody was injured, but the school was damaged. The deputy commissioner said the police had started investigating. Police sources said no arrests had been made and a case had been registered against unidentified criminals.
Cases were also registered on Wednesday against 16 suspected militants belonging to various extremists organisations in Diamer for burning seven community schools including a girls’ primary school in Darel on February 16. An official source said the schools were being targeted because extremist groups in Diamer felt that enrolment in their madrassas would fall. He said enrolment in the government-run and community-based schools had increased considerably in this conservative area in the last three years, which had affected the number of people attending madrassas.
| I think that we can safely assume that the concern isn't the kiddies, but the drop-off in Soddy funding that can be expected if the parents opt to send the brats somewhere that'll teach 'em to read and write and do sums, rather than memorizing long passages of Arabic. |
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