Pakistan - Security

Militants blow up girls' school in Pakistan: police

Source : AFP 04.06.2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, June 4, 2009 (AFP) - Militants blew up a girls' school on the outskirts of Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar on Thursday as the military pressed on with an offensive against the Taliban, police said.

The school was detonated in the Budaber area about 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Peshawar, local police chief Abdul Ghafoor Afridi said.

At least 40 kilogrammes (88 pounds) of explosives were used to blow up the school, he said, adding that "four rooms were completely destroyed and three were damaged."

Another police official Shakarullah Khan said militants used a timed device to blow up the building.

There were no casualties as schools are closed for the summer, he said.

Police suspected the bombing was part of an intimidation campaign because the government has used schools to shelter some of the 2.4 million people displaced by the military operation since late April.

Militants in the district of Swat, where the operation is concentrated, have destroyed scores of schools, mostly for girls, during a two-year campaign waged by radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah to enforce sharia law.

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