PESHAWAR: Taliban militants blew up a girls’ school in Pakistan’s Khyber district on Tuesday, the third such attack in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan so far this month. An intelligence official in the area said Taliban attacked the government-run school overnight when no one was at the property. The incident took place at Yousaf Kely village near Bara town, around 20 kilometres south of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province which has been hit by five suicide attacks in the last eight days. Islamist militants have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years.

Nearly 200 schools were destroyed in the Swat valley alone during a two-year Taliban uprising to enforce sharia law in a district once favoured by Western tourists for its ski slopes and mountain air.