Militants kill female teacher in Bajaur

KHAR: A female teacher was killed and two of her colleagues wounded when masked militants shot them in an ambush in Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt on Thursday, officials said.

The victims — all women — were targeted as they returned home on foot from their school in Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district, officials said.

“Five to six militants who were hiding their faces ambushed them. One female teacher died on the spot,” Adalat Khan, an administrative official told AFP, adding that her two wounded colleagues had been taken to hospital.

Two intelligence officials also confirmed the incident.

Bajaur was once a stronghold of Taliban militants who are opposed to the education of girls and have destroyed hundreds of schools in northwest Pakistan in recent years.

Pakistan’s military first launched operations in Bajaur in August 2008 and have repeatedly claimed to have eliminated the militant threat.

The country’s northwest tribal belt is a stronghold of militant groups and extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001.
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