Three young girls in eastern Afghanistan were in critical condition in hospital on Sunday night after being poisoned, apparently by militants as punishment for attending school.
President Hamid Karzai said those responsible for the poisonings, in Khost Province, were less than human. He said the attack had been carried out by terrorists and was the work of foreign elements.
"I will not call anyone an Afghan or a Muslim who poisons an eight-year-old child because she is going to school," Karzai said. "They are beasts."
Vikram Parekh, from the International Crisis Group, said there had been a series of attacks on girls' schools, particularly in the south of the country, in recent months but this was the first time children had been attacked.
"A girl's school was recently burnt to the ground in Kandahar and others have been attacked, but this is a horrible development to see that the girls themselves would be targeted," he said.
Few details of the incident were available on Sunday, but militants are angry about the government's reversal of a Taliban ban on female education. More than 4 million students are enrolled in schools this year -- more than ever before -- including one-third of the country's girls.
But the transition has not been without problems and many conservative families still refuse to send their daughters to school.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a gas tanker truck explosion in an western village bazaar on Sunday climbed to 45 yesterday and was likely to rise further, doctors said.
The blast was sparked by the driver using a welding torch to repair his truck, local government officials said. A fuel tanker parked nearby also exploded.
Many of the dead and injured were rushed by car and truck over dirt roads to the main hospital in Herat city, about 120km north.
At least 28 people were injured and one doctor said many had massive burns and were not expected to survive.
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