Afghanistan – Girl Students & Teachers Poisoned in School

Kabul, May 17, 2024 (EFE).— Nearly 80 students and teachers fell ill after consuming an unknown poisonous substance at a school in Afghanistan, authorities said on Friday.

The sick included 64 female students and 15 teachers from a school in the Kiti district of Daikondi province, provincial information director Mustafa Saleh told EFE.

The incident occurred on Thursday night and comes amid the Taliban’s ban on secondary and university education for women in Afghanistan.

All affected individuals were hospitalized immediately. Although the health condition of most of the girls “is good,” according to Saleh, “three of them are in critical condition.”

Saleh said they had not yet identified the substance used for the poisoning, nor the perpetrators and their motives.

Afghanistan experienced a similar episode in June 2023, when at least 82 girls were poisoned in two schools in the northern part of the country, along with eight teachers and two custodians.

Since taking control of Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban regime has increasingly curtailed the rights of women and girls, prohibiting their education, political participation, and involvement in public life.

The Taliban have drastically restricted the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, as well as the rights to equality and non-discrimination.

The Islamists have banned secondary and university education for women and have mandated that women cover their faces and be accompanied by a male family member when outside their homes.

Over the past nearly three years, the Taliban have been reintroducing oppressive norms from their previous regime (1996-2001), based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law that stripped women of numerous fundamental rights. EFE

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Poisoning Incident at Afghan School: 80 Students, Teachers Fall Ill – EFE Noticias