POLICE raided a religious school in remote western Afghanistan and arrested 22 people, an official said Tuesday, alleging the school was involved in organising Taliban suicide attacks. Afghan police acting on a tip-off raided the school late Monday in the western province of Farah - which last month saw several suicide blasts - provincial police chief Sayyed Agha Saqib said. The school in the Bala Buluk district was being used as a “terrorist centre” and was supported by Pakistani nationals and Arabs, he said.A Taliban commander named Mullah Hayatullah was alleged to be using the school to provide military training for the Taliban. The mullah was not among those caught in the raid and some of those arrested confessed to being Taliban. Afghan and Western officials say that many of the men behind the almost daily attacks in Afghanistan are trained in the shcools - known as 'madrassas' - run by extremist Islamists in areas of Pakistan along Afghanistan's eastern border.
Farah province, actually in the west of the country and adjoining Iran, has until the last few weeks seen relatively little of the Taliban violence stalking mainly southern and eastern Afghanistan. In late February the small town of Bakwa was overrun by Taliban fighters who were in control for less than 24 hours before Afghan security forces drove them out. Authorities later detained the Bakwa district governor and his police commander for alleged links with the Taliban. A suicide bombing on a convoy delivering the new police chief to his post on March 12 killed the officer and nine of his men. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the murders.
A suicide car bombing in Bala Buluk the previous day killed one policeman and wounded three others. It struck a convoy carrying a police chief for western provinces including Farah.