Attack threats force Afghan schools to shut

MORE than 80 girls’ schools have closed and exams have been postponed after militants from Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in eastern Afghanistan said they would bomb them in retaliation for US airstrikes.

Thousands of pupils were kept at home in Nangarhar province after Isil declared that “heavy blasts and thunderous attacks will target all those girl schools that disobey this warning”.

Broadcasts on their propaganda radio warned officials to close the schools and told parents “not to send their daughters to schools to pursue this secular infidel curriculum”.

All girls’ schools and many boys’ schools were closed in the city of Jalalabad and its neighbouring districts.

Hayatullah Hayat, governor of Nangarhar, dismissed the warning by Isil, also known as Daesh, as propaganda and said: “Unfortunately, they want to disrupt the people’s understanding [about the prevailing situation] in order to achieve their goals.”