Taliban blows up new government school in northwest Pakistan

Militants blew up part of a newly constructed government school in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region late on Friday night, a spokesman for a wing of the Pakistani Taliban said on Saturday, the latest in a string of attacks on educational institutions.

No one was hurt in the blast in Pakistan’s restive tribal belt, but 18 labourers working on the site were abducted, said Azam Tariq, a spokesman for an arm of the Pakistani Taliban known as the “Sajna” group, which claimed responsibility for the attack. He said the workers were released a short time later.

“We have blown up the school because it was a government installation,” said Tariq, warning the group would continue to attack government targets.

Twenty people were killed and dozens wounded last month when militants launched an attack on Bacha Khan University in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a little more than a year after Taliban gunmen massacred 134 students at a military school in nearby Peshawar.

The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan’s resolve to fight militants along its border with Afghanistan.

Officials in South Waziristan said the girls’ wing of the school in the Tehsil Tiarza area was damaged in Friday’s blast, as well as some heavy machinery being used for ongoing construction at the site.