IN AFGHANISTAN, MORE THAN 80 SCHOOLGIRLS WERE POISONED AND HOSPITALIZED.

Nearly 80 girls were poisoned and hospitalized in two separate attacks at their elementary school on Saturday and Sunday, according to a local Afghan education official.

According to Mohammad Rahmani, the provincial education department’s chairman, the poisonings took place in northern Afghanistan’s Sangcharak region.

According to Sky News, Rahmani claimed that the person who planned the poisoning had a personal vendetta but did not provide further details.

The Afghan education official revealed that 60 children at Naswan-e-Kabod Aab school and 17 more at Naswan-e-Faizabad school had been poisoned.

This type of assault was reportedly the first to occur since the Taliban seized control in August 2021 and started to restrict the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls.

Women are not allowed in the majority of employment or in public places, and girls are not allowed to continue their education past the sixth grade, even in universities.

Girls have access to schools since the restriction on women’s education, but since the Taliban took power, hundreds of thousands of girls and young women have been living in terror and oppression.

Both elementary schools were attacked sequentially despite being close to one another, according to Rahmani. The students were taken to the hospital and are now all well.

Initial findings from the department’s ongoing investigation suggest that someone with a grudge paid a third party to carry out the attacks, according to Rahmani.

He did not disclose how the kids were poisoned or the severity of their wounds, and he did not provide the girls’ ages, only stating that they were in classes one through six.