KARACHI, Pakistan
Two primary schools were torched in Pakistan’s northwestern Kurram tribal region Tuesday morning, officials said.
Although there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, authorities say it was carried out by suspected militants.
The incident, latest in a string of attacks on schools in the restless tribal belt, took place weeks after terrorists carried out a gruesome massacre of 134 children at a school in the city of Peshawar.
Amjad Ali Khan, the political agent of Kurram Agency, said suspected militants doused furniture of the two schools with petrol early morning before setting it on fire.
“All the furniture, wooden benches, school record and other material have been charred, while the buildings have also been badly damaged by the fire,” Khan said.
The schools were closed for winter vacations at the time of the attack. The government extended winter vacations for schools in the country for two more weeks, fearing another Peshawar like attack by militants.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but security agencies in the past pointed fingers at the Taliban for such attacks. Some 60 schools have been burned in Kurram agency in the last eight years, local media said.
The Kurram agency, one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal areas in Pakistan, has become infamous in Pakistan for its sectarian Shia-Sunni violence.
Terrorists have systematically targeted schools and school children in Pakistan over the years.
Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, who at 17 became the youngest Nobel peace prize winner ever in 2014, was herself shot by the Pakistani Taliban in 2011 for promoting female education in Swat valley.
Over 140 people, mostly children, were killed in the Peshawar school massacre on Dec. 16, making it one of the worst mass murders in the country's recent history. The attack was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.
On Dec. 24, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced a newly approved counter-terrorism policy that allowed the controversial measure of establishing special military courts to try Taliban militants. The moratorium on the death penalty was also lifted in the country and several high profile militants who were convicted of carrying out attacks on the Pakistan army were hanged.
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