Girls' school in Bannu set ablaze by miscreants

• Vandals target Girls Higher Secondary School Mumbati Barakzai.
• Incident took place overnight on Friday, police say.
• Miscreants stole solar panels and other items during attack.

BANNU: Miscreants set fire to a girls' school in district Bannu's Meryan Tehsil Friday night amid an increase in militancy in the tribal region.

The overnight incident targeted the Government Girls Higher Secondary School in Kotka Mumbati Barakzai, which suffered significant damage. The school's science lab was turned to ashes.

The miscreants stole solar panels and other items and vandalised the school's boundary wall as well. They also wrote threatening graffiti near the main gate, warning of additional attacks if the school tried to resume classes.

In the wake of the incident, police officials collected evidence from the site, kicking off an investigation into the terror act, the District Police Officer Iftikhar Khan said.

The schools in the district are currently closed due to the winter break. Meanwhile, the incident marks the first instance of a school being set ablaze in Bannu following the upswing in militant attacks which came after the government's decision to terminate the ceasefire with the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan last year.

However, this is not the first time this year that a girls' school has been targeted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In May 2023, two girls' schools were blown up by terrorists in the North Waziristan district.

This attack came after Islamabad initiated a new offensive against terrorists in response to a surge in attacks, including a destructive mosque bombing which claimed over 100 lives in February this year.

Historically, the TTP extremists have prohibited female education in areas which came under their control in the province's northwestern region.

However, stability prevailed after the Pakistani military's Operation Zarb-e-Azb in June 2014 along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, which targeted militant strongholds.

But the country has, regardless, seen a return of terrorism in the form of targeted attacks by terrorists, particularly since late 2022. This year, however, the terror attacks witnessed a surge in militancy, particularly suicide attacks that reached the highest level since 2014.