Kabul, April 26: Thirteen more Afghan schoolgirls have fallen ill to suspected gas poisoning in Kunduz Province, raising total number of such cases to 80 in the past week.
The victims reported symptoms such as headaches, vomiting, shivering and dizziness on arrival to the area hospital, said Humayun Khamoosh, head of Central Hospital in the northern province.
“They complained of a strange odor in their classrooms before they fell ill. After the initial treatment they were in stable condition,” he added.
Khamoosh added that the illnesses are being investigated as suspected cases of intentional poisoning aimed at female educational facilities. The question being asked is whether the victims were targeted by militants that oppose female education or if it is a case of mass hysteria.
Reports from the three schools within 2 miles (3 kilometers) of one another have raised alarms in a region that has been threatened by the Taliban and their militant allies.
In 2008, in one of the most chilling attacks, men on motorbikes sprayed acid from squirt guns and water bottles on 15 schoolgirls and teachers walking to a school in Kandahar, the southern city which is the home base of the Taliban.
President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, addressed the recent incidents, describing any attempt to keep girls out of school as a “terrorist act.”
——-Agencies