Govt girls school blown up in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Islamabad, June 24 (IANS) A government girls’ primary school was destroyed in an overnight blast in Sara Ghowara area of Birmal tehsil of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Lower South Waziristan district, local media reported on Wednesday.

The school building was destroyed after unidentified assailants targeted it using explosive material late on Tuesday night.

District Police Officer (DPO) Muhammad Tahir Shah said that the police have lodged an initial report on the incident and launched a probe, the Dawn reported. So far, no group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Attacks on educational institutions have increased in Lower South Waziristan in recent months, according to local police and residents. Two schools were earlier attacked by unidentified assailants in Birmal tehsil in February and March, according to the Dawn report.

Last week, a report, citing partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) till June 14, revealed that 11 incidents of attacks on educational institutes have been reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2026, resulting in the death of 13 people.

During the same period in 2025, only one incident of attack on an educational institution was reported in the province, in which three children were injured, indicating a rise in the level of terrorist violence targeting educational institutions. A total of 11 incidents of attacks were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2025, in which three people were injured, an Eurasia Review report said.

“Since 2006, at least 557 attacks targeting educational institutions have been recorded, resulting in 321 fatalities and 208 persons injured. (Since media access is heavily restricted in the most disturbed areas of KP, and there is only fitful release of information by government agencies, the actual figures could be much higher.) The first documented attack on an educational institution occurred on December 25, 2006, when a bomb explosion damaged a girls’ school in the Noor Ali Kalay area of Darra Adamkhel tehsil (revenue unit) in Kohat district,” Institute for Conflict Management Research Associate, Tushar Ranjan Mohanty, wrote in Eurasia Review.

“The blast, which took place at approximately 12:45 am, completely destroyed three rooms of the school building. Prior to the attack, extremists had reportedly circulated threatening letters to several middle and high schools, warning school authorities to stop girls from studying beyond Class IV or face the destruction of school facilities and the killing of school principals,” he added.

The deadliest attack on an educational institution took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Peshawar in 2014, when a seven-member Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) squad stormed the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar. At least 135 students, 10 school staff members, including the principal, and three soldiers were killed, and 121 people, including 118 students and three staff members, were injured in the attack, according to the report.

–IANS

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