Girls skip school after acid attack

Students don't show after classmates were burned and blinded by militants.

Published November 14, 2008 10:30PM (EST)

An update on Wednesday's brutal attack on 15 Afghan schoolgirls: After seeing their fellow students burned and blinded by men with acid-filled water guns, all of the school's 1,500 students were absent on Thursday.

The Associated Press reports that "a handful of teachers showed up" and "the only students who tried to attend were about 20 primary school students who arrived late in the afternoon and were sent home because the school had already decided not to hold classes." The attack is just the latest in several hundreds of anti-eduction attacks to be carried out since the fall of the Taliban, which outlawed girls' education. In short, the attackers, who are suspected to be Taliban militants, successfully attained their goal of scaring girls out of school.

Safia Ibrahimi, a friend of one of the two girls blinded in the attack, told the Globe and Mail: "After we saw her eyes, nobody will go to school any more." Principal Mehmood Qaderi told the AP that teachers and students have told him that "until security improves, they will not go to the school." Who could blame them?

 


By Tracy Clark-Flory

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