Dozens of Afghan schoolgirls have fallen ill in recent days after reporting a strange odor in their classrooms, prompting an investigation into whether they were targeted by militants who oppose education for girls or victims of mass hysteria.
Either way, the reports from three schools within 3km of one another in the northern province of Kunduz have raised alarm in a city threatened by the Taliban and their militant allies.
The latest cases were on Sunday, when 13 girls became sick, Kunduz provincial spokesman Mahbobullah Sayedi said. Another 47 complained of dizziness and nausea the day before, and 23 fell ill on Wednesday.
All complained of a strange smell in class before they fell ill.
“I came out from the main hall, and I saw lots of other girls scattered everywhere,” said Anesa, a nine-year-old who was hospitalized briefly on Sunday.
“Then suddenly, I felt that I was losing my balance and falling,” she said.
None of the illnesses was serious and the girls were only hospitalized for a short time. The health ministry said blood samples were inconclusive and were being sent to Kabul for further testing to determine the cause of the illnesses.
“This is a matter of concern not only for us but for the families,” Sayedi said, blaming the sicknesses on “enemies” who oppose education for girls.
‘TERRORIST ACT’
In the capital of Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, said any attempt to keep girls out of school was a “terrorist act.”
Girls were not allowed to attend school when the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan. The group was ousted from power in the 2001 US-led invasion. The Taliban and other conservative extremist groups have been known to target schoolgirls.
In one of the most chilling attacks, men on motorbikes sprayed acid from squirt guns and water bottles onto 15 schoolgirls and teachers in 2008 as they walked to a girls school in Kandahar, the southern city that is the spiritual birthplace of the militant movement.
Previous cases of sudden illness in schools have left families too frightened to send their daughters to school.
Last year, dozens of girls were hospitalized in Kapisa Province, just northeast of Kabul, after many collapsed with headaches and nausea following reports of a strange odor in their schoolyard. The Taliban was blamed, but research into similar mass sickenings elsewhere has suggested that some might be the result of group hysteria.
CIVILIAN DEATHS
Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Sunday, hundreds of people blocked a main road in Logar Province, west of Kabul, and burned several trucks to protest what they said were civilian deaths in NATO operations. They gathered hours after NATO said coalition troops killed several insurgents and captured a Taliban sub-commander.
“The man they killed was a schoolteacher and a mullah,” said businessman Jan Mohammed. “They killed him inside his house and because of that the people came and burned my gas station, my car and my house.”
He complained that if NATO thought the mullah was with the Taliban, “they should have arrested him at his school not gone to his house at midnight.”
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