10 Taliban arrested in school girl acid attack

[November 25, 2008]  KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan police have arrested 10 Taliban militants involved in an acid attack this month against 15 girls and teachers walking to school in southern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Tuesday.

"Several" of the arrested militants have confessed to taking part in the acid attack, said Kandahar Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi. He declined to say exactly how many confessed.

High-ranking Taliban fighters paid the militants a total of $2,000 to carry out the attack, Raufi said. The attackers came from Pakistan but were Afghan nationals, said Doud Doud, an Interior Ministry official.

The attackers squirted the acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school in Kandahar city on Nov. 12. Several girls suffered burns to the face and were hospitalized. One teenager couldn't open her eyes days after the attack, which sparked condemnations from around the world.

After the investigation is complete, the accused will be tried in open court, said Raufi.

One of the attack's victims, a teacher named Nuskaal who was burned through her burqa, called Tuesday for a harsh punishment for the attackers.

"If these people are found guilty, the government should throw the same acid on these criminals. After that they should be hanged," said Nuskaal, who like many Afghans goes by one name.

President Hamid Karzai earlier this month called for a public execution of the perpetrators.

Afghanistan's government called the attack "un-Islamic," and the United Nations labeled it "a hideous crime." First lady Laura Bush decried it as cowardly.

Kandahar is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban and is one of Afghanistan's most conservative regions, a place where women rarely venture far from home.

A Taliban spokesman earlier this month denied that Taliban militants were involved in the attack.

Girls were banned from schools under the Taliban regime, the hard-line Islamists who 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.

The country has made a major push to improve access to education for girls since the Taliban's ouster. Fewer than 1 million Afghan children -- mostly all boys -- attended school under Taliban rule. Roughly 6 million Afghan children, including 2 million girls, attend school today.

But many conservative families still keep their girls at home.

Raufi said that girls attending Mirwais Mena girls' school didn't attend class for three days after the attack, but that girls have since returned to class there.

Kandahar province's schools serve 110,000 students at 232 schools, Raufi said. But only 10 of the 232 are for girls. Some 26,000 girls go to school, he said.

Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls' schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls' school in central Logar province last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007. The Afghan government has also accused the Taliban of attacking schools in an attempt to force teenage boys into the Islamic militia.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the country's intelligence agency said it has arrested four people, including three religious leaders and a youth, for alleged involvement in suicide and other bomb attacks in northern Kunduz province.

The ring was broken up after a failed bombing mission in the province earlier this year, when the would-be bomber failed to properly detonate his explosives, the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

[Associated Press; By NOOR KHAN]

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