Militants bomb a girls school in northwestern Pakistan, once a Taliban stronghold. No one was harmed

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan. Militants detonated a bomb at a girls’ school in a former Pakistani Taliban stronghold in the country’s volatile northwest, severely damaging the structure, police said Thursday. No one was injured in the overnight attack.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Wednesday night attack that targeted the only girls’ school in Shawa, a town in North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan, he said. local police chief Amjad Wazir.

UNICEF condemned the attack as “a despicable and cowardly act that could endanger the future of many young and talented girls.”

According to the police chief, the attackers first beat the school guard before detonating the explosives at the Aafia private Islamic model girls’ school, which has 150 students.

Suspicion is likely to fall on Islamic militants and specifically the Pakistani Taliban, who have attacked girls’ schools in the province in the past, saying women should not be educated.

In a statement, Abdullah Fadil, UNICEF representative in Pakistan, said: “The destruction of a girls’ school in a remote and neglected area is a heinous crime that is detrimental to national progress.” He cited Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s statement on Wednesday in which he declared an education emergency and pledged to work to enroll 26 million out-of-school children.

Pakistan witnessed multiple attacks on girls’ schools until 2019, especially in the Swat Valley and other parts of the northwest, where the Pakistani Taliban long controlled former tribal regions. In 2012, insurgents attacked Malala Yousafzai, a teenage student and advocate for girls’ education who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, have been driven out of Swat and other regions in recent years. The TTP is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

The Taliban’s takeover of neighboring Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban.

Separately, the head of the US Central Command, General Erik Kurilla, visited Pakistan on Thursday for talks with the country’s army chief, General Asim Munir.

A Pakistani military statement said they discussed “issues of shared interests, particularly cooperation on regional security issues” and that Kurilla praised the Pakistani military’s efforts to bring peace and stability to the region and the cooperation between Pakistani and US forces.

According to a CENTCOM statement, Kurilla also visited several locations in the northwest border with Afghanistan and met with Pakistani regional commanders to discuss counterterrorism operations along the border.

“The capability, competence and professionalism of the Pakistan Armed Forces is extraordinary,” Kurilla was quoted as saying in the statement.

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Associated Press journalist Riaz Khan contributed to this story from Peshawar, Pakistan.