KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Islamic extremists burned down a school for girls south of the capital and distributed letters threatening to kill anyone working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government, a senior Afghan military official said Friday. The Abu Sofian school, which was housed in a tent, was torched on Wednesday night in Logar province, 30 miles south of Kabul, said Gen. Hatiqulluh Luddin, a regional military commander. The school was closed for a monthlong holiday at the time and nobody was hurt.
He said authorities were still investigating the incident but blamed unnamed extremists in nearby villages.
Luddin said that another tented girls' school was burned down in a neighboring district two weeks ago.
The Abu Sofian school, which has about 250 students, will reopen as planned on Saturday. Schools across the country have been closed because of hot weather. The former Taliban regime prohibited girls from attending school as part of its drive to establish a pure" Islamic state, before it was ousted by a U.S.-led military force in late 2001. There is still opposition among some in Afghanistan's Pashtun ethnic majority to education for girls.
Taliban remnants and their allies have recently stepped up attacks on government targets -- particularly in eastern and southern Afghanistan -- in an apparent drive to undermine the administration of President Harmid Karzai. Luddin said that in the past week, authorities in Logar have found 30 fliers -- sometimes distributed by different extremist groups -- threatening anyone who cooperates with his government.
One letter, claiming to be from the Taliban, said that the group was active all over the country and did not want girls' schools. It threatened to kill anyone who worked with the government.
Another letter from a group calling itself Mujahedeen Message said: Nobody should work with the Americans. It is an infidel government, whose workings should die."
Luddin echoed frequent claims made in Afghanistan and abroad that Taliban fugitives have found a haven in neighboring Pakistan, which backed the regime until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
