An Afghan official says hundreds of thousands of children in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar cannot go to school due to the presence of Takfiri Daesh terrorists in the area.
The spokesman for Nangarhar’s Directorate of Education, Mohammad Asif, said Daesh extremists have forced the closure of 58 schools, leaving some 300,000 boys and girls out of classrooms.
He added that officials in the Afghan education department are trying to reopen the schools through negotiations with security personnel, local authorities as well as tribal elders.
The report comes as Daesh terrorists are also keeping more than 100 people captive in three detention camps in Nangarhar Province.
“Daesh has three prisons in Chapari, Takhtu and Bandar areas, where they have imprisoned 127 people, including religious scholars, senior local authorities as well as 19 Afghan police officers,” Achin district chief, Hajji Ghalib Mujahid, said on September 17.
Nangarhar has been witnessing a rise in the presence of Daesh terrorists in at least seven of its districts in recent months.
On June 16, the Taliban warned Daesh ringleader, Ibrahim al-Samarrai aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, against “waging a parallel insurgency in Afghanistan.”
The militant group asked the Daesh leader to keep his men out of Afghanistan by withdrawing his support for those elements that are recruiting young militants in Taliban strongholds.
Afghanistan is gripped by insecurity nearly 14 years after the United States and its allies attacked the country in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. Although the attack overthrew the Taliban, many areas across Afghanistan still face violence and insecurity.