According to available information, suspected militants blew up a girls school in a village near Wana town of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s South Waziristan district, officials after another one was targeted in a similar manner in the restive tribal regions of the province. There was no loss of life reported in the overnight attack, but the academy was heavily damaged. The under-construction academy was being built with the support of the Wana Welfare Association.
An official of the association said the academy was inaugurated on March 20. He regretted that the school-being built to spread literacy among girls in the backward region was bombed. The official continued that he was unaware of the motive behind the attack, but rued that some elements in the backward region-was bombed. According to the police in an investigation underway about the explosion. No one was hurt in the latest attack overnight on Thursday, according to the non-government group, Wana Welfare Association which runs the school. “About a moth ago, received a letter from a militant group demanding a specific portion of our funding. A few days later, another letter was thrown into our office, demanding a payment of 10 million rupees ($36,000),” a senior member of the Wana Welfare Association in Peshawar told AFP. “Following that, we started receiving threatening calls from Aghan numbers, demanding extortion money,” he added asking not to be because he was not authorized to speak to media. He alleged school administration was told demands were coming from local Taliban fractions.“ We made numerous attempts to reach out to these militant groups locally but were unsuccessful,” he said. A district government official told AFP, on condition of anonymity, that Taliban factions are extorting local traders in the area.
Acknowledgement: News published in the Express Tribune on 18th May 2024
