Acid attacks threaten Afghan schoolgirls

Kandahar: No students showed up at Mirwais Mena girls' school in the Taliban's spiritual birthplace the morning after men on motorcycles attacked 15 girls and teachers with acid.

The men squirted the acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school on Wednesday, principal Mehmoud Qaderi said. Some of the girls have burns on their school uniforms but others will have scars on their faces.

One teenager still cannot open her eyes after being hit in the face with acid.

"Today the school's open, but there are no girls," Qaderi said on Thursday. "Yesterday, all of the classes were full." His school has 1,500 students.

Afghanistan's government condemned the attack as "un-Islamic" and blamed it on the "country's enemies", a typical reference to Taliban militants. Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, denied the insurgents' involvement.

Girls were banned from schools under the Taliban rule, the hardline Islamist regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Women were only allowed to leave the house wearing a body-hiding burqa and accompanied by a male family member.

Qaderi said he believes there were multiple teams of assailants because attacks took place at the same time in different neighbourhoods. Provincial Police Chief Mati Ullah Khan said three people have been arrested. He would not provide further details because the investigation was not completed.

The country has made a major push to improve access to education for girls since the Taliban ouster.

Education

Fewer than one million Afghan children, mostly all boys, attended school under Taliban rule. Roughly six million Afghan children, including two million girls, attend school today.

But many conservative families still keep their girls at home.

"They don't want us to go to school. They don't like education," said Susan Ebrahimi, who started teaching at Mirwais Mena four months ago. She and her mother, also a teacher at the school, were wearing burqas on their walk to work when the motorbike stopped next to them. "They didn't say anything. They just stopped the motorbike and one of the guys threw acid on us and they went away," Ebrahimi said in a telephone interview.

The acid ate through the cloth covering Ebrahimi's face and left burns down her left cheek. The acid also burned her mother's hand.

"I am worried that I will have scars on my face," said Ebrahimi, who is 19 years old and not married.

Fifteen people were hit with acid in all, including four teachers, Qaderi said.

Ebrahimi said it was the Taliban that attacked her but then explained she used the term to refer to anyone against education for women.

The United Nations called the attack "a hideous crime".

The attack is "contrary to previous assurances Afghans had been given that there would not be further attacks against schools or students", the UN said in a statement.

US first lady Laura Bush also decried the attack.

"These cowardly and shameful acts are condemned by honourable people in the United States and around the world," she said.

Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls' schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls' school last year. Unicef says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007.