After Iran, 80 Afghan girls hospitalised after being poisoned at schools

An education official in Afghanistan said almost 80 girls were hospitalised after being poisoned at schools, Fox News reported.

According to reports, the incidents happened over June 3 and June 4 in the province of Sar-e-Pul in the north. Mohammad Rahmani, the director of the provincial department of education, said the poisoning had occurred in the Sangcharak district among female pupils in grades 1 through 6.

He said that 60 children at Naswan-e-Kabod Aab School and 17 more at Naswan-e-Faizabad School had been poisoned, Fox News reported.

“Both primary schools are near to each other and were targeted one after the other,” he said, adding, “We shifted the students to the hospital, and now they are all fine.”

The department’s investigation is ongoing and initial inquiries show that someone with a grudge paid a third party to carry out the attacks, Mohammad Rahmani said, without sharing further details. He gave no information on how the girls were poisoned or the nature of their injuries, according to Fox News.

It is thought to be the first time this kind of assault has happened since the Taliban swept to power in August 2021 and began their crackdown on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls.

Girls are banned from education beyond sixth grade, including university, and women are barred from most jobs and public spaces Fox News reported.

The attack serves as a reminder of a wave of poisonings in neighbouring Iran targeting school-age girls, dating back to November. Thousands of students said they were sickened by noxious fumes in the incidents. But there has been no word on who might be behind the incidents or what — if any, chemicals have been used, Fox News reported.

Iranian Schoolgirls Poisoned

On February 26, Iran’s Deputy Education Minister Younes Panahi revealed that ‘some people’ are poisoning schoolgirls in Qom, Iran. IRNA quoted Panahi, “After the poisoning of several students in Qom schools, it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed.”

Reportedly the poisoning cases were first reported in November 2022 amid protests against Iran’s regime over Mahsa Amini’s death due to head trauma in police custody for wearing an improper hijab. Since then, hundreds of cases of respiratory poisoning have been found among schoolgirls.

In the first incident, 18 schoolgirls were taken to the hospital after complaints of nausea, headaches, coughing, breathing difficulties, and palpitations, among other symptoms.

On February 14, the parents of poisoned schoolgirls gathered around the city’s governorate to demand explanations from authorities. On the next day, Government spokesperson Ali Bahadori Jahromi claimed that the authorities were investigating to find the cause of the poisonings. However, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri recently ordered a judicial probe into the poisonings.

Recently, Nafiseh Moradi, a researcher of Islamic studies at Al Zahra University, published a commentary on Qom News speculating that ultra-religious groups similar to Afghanistan’s Taliban might be behind poisoning schoolgirls. She speculated that the ultra-religious groups were inspired by the Taliban’s ban on girl education. Therefore, the poisonings were being done to instil fear among girls and their parents to prevent them from educating girls. In addition, she voiced her suspicions about the visible segregation based on gender, with the illness disproportionately affecting schoolgirls.

In the latest decree, the Taliban has banned female students from sitting in university entrance exams. Another decree followed the decision from the Taliban prohibiting women from working in non-governmental organisations, which sparked national and international outrage.

As Afghan women continue to grapple with challenges related to education due to Taliban-imposed bans, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a recent statement, said that the females in war-torn Afghanistan are living in exile in their own country.

The UN Chief reiterated that the fundamental rights of Afghan women and girls are trampled due to the ban on education by the de-facto authorities. In a statement, the UN said that Guterres expressed his concerns about the right of women and girls in Afghanistan.

(with inputs from ANI)