In a concerning incident, 80 girls from two schools in the Samcharak district of Zar-e-Pul province in northern Afghanistan were admitted to the hospital due to poisoning. The incident occurred recently, according to Mohammad Rahmani, the provincial head of the Education Department.
The affected schools are Naswan-e-Kabad Ab School, with 60 girls, and Naswan-e-Faizabad School, with 17 girls. These schools are adjacent to each other, and the attacks on them occurred one after the other. The girl students who fell ill after the incident are currently undergoing treatment and are in the process of recovery.
Rahmani stated that a thorough investigation is underway to uncover the details of the incident. Preliminary findings indicate that the poisoning was a deliberate act carried out by someone with malicious intent. The nature of the poison used in the incident has not been determined yet.
This distressing incident comes in the wake of the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, leading to the continuous suppression of women’s rights and freedoms. Under the Taliban regime, there has been a ban on girls’ education beyond the sixth grade. However, this incident of poisoning schoolgirls is the first of its kind since the new regime took control.
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