ISLAMABAD: Two girls were killed and six others, including a driver, injured when a school van came under attack in Pakistan’s Attock district on Thursday, the latest deadly assault in the region on school going children.
While schools vans and campuses have been attacked in the past by militants who are opposed particularly to girls going to school, an initial police probe into the latest violence suggested personal enmity between the driver’s family and the unknown attackers.
“This incident occurred in Dheri Chohan village near the Saddar area of Attock,” Muhammad Safeer, a police spokesperson in the area, told Arab News. “It was the result of an enmity between two groups, with the van driver as the main target.”
“However, during the indiscriminate firing, two girls were killed and six others injured, including five girls and the driver.”
Safeer said the driver was the main target of the attackers, not the children traveling with him.
The two girls killed in the attack were nine and 10 years of age, according to Rescue 1122 officials in the area, while other children in the van were between eight and 12 years old.
“Those who target innocent children do not deserve to be called human,” he said. “Firing on children in a school van is an act of brutality,” Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement. “Those who display such barbarism do not deserve any leniency.”
Maryam Nawaz, the chief minister of Punjab where Attock is located, also took notice of the incident and sought a report from the area’s administrative officials.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai was 14 when she was shot in the head in 2012 in Swat Valley by Taliban militants over her advocacy for girls’ education and opposition to terrorism. Since then, many schools in Pakistan’s northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan have been attacked by suspected militants.
Pakistan police say ‘personal enmity’ behind attack on school van, killing two girls
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Pakistan police say ‘personal enmity’ behind attack on school van, killing two girls
- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai was 14 when she was shot in the head in 2012 in Swat Valley by Taliban militants
- Since then, many schools in Pakistan’s northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan have been attacked by suspected militants
Three Afghan migrants die crossing into Iran as UN warns of new displacement toward Pakistan
- UNHCR says 1.8 million Afghans were forced to return from Iran this year, straining Afghanistan’s resources
- Rights groups warn forced refugee returns risk harm as Afghanistan faces food shortages and climate shocks
KABUL: Three Afghans died from exposure in freezing temperatures in the western province of Herat while trying to illegally enter Iran, a local army official said on Saturday.
“Three people who wanted to illegally cross the Iran-Afghanistan border have died because of the cold weather,” the Afghan army official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He added that a shepherd was also found dead in the mountainous area of Kohsan from the cold.
The migrants were part of a group that attempted to cross into Iran on Wednesday and was stopped by Afghan border forces.
“Searches took place on Wednesday night, but the bodies were only found on Thursday,” the army official said.
More than 1.8 million Afghans were forced to return to Afghanistan by the Iranian authorities between January and the end of November 2025, according to the latest figures from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), which said that the majority were “forced and coerced returns.”
“These mass returns in adverse circumstances have strained Afghanistan’s already overstretched resources and services” which leads to “risks of onward and new displacement, including return movements back into Pakistan and Iran and onward,” UNHCR posted on its site dedicated to Afghanistan’s situation.
This week, Amnesty International called on countries to stop forcibly returning people to Afghanistan, citing a “real risk of serious harm for returnees.”
Hit by two major earthquakes in recent months and highly vulnerable to climate change, Afghanistan faces multiple challenges.
It is subject to international sanctions particularly due to the exclusion of women from many jobs and public places, described by the UN as “gender apartheid.”
More than 17 million people in the country are facing acute food insecurity, the UN World Food Program said Tuesday.
