Suspicion has fallen on
sympathizers of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamist militia that opposes
education for women and prohibited girls from going to school when it was in
power until it being ousted by a 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Poisonous levels of
organophosphates were found in samples taken from girls sickened in incidents
over the past two years, said ministry spokesman Dr. Ghulam Sakhi Kargar.
Samples from more recent
cases have been sent to Turkey for analysis and no results have been issued
yet, Kargar said.
Last month, 48 pupils and
teachers at Kabul's Zabihullah Esmati High School and 60 students and teachers
at the Totia Girls School were hospitalized after fainting or complaining of
breathing problems, dizziness and nausea.
Students say they began
feeling unwell after being exposed to an unknown gas spreading through
classrooms.
Most were released within
hours. It remains unclear how the gas spread.
In addition to killing
weeds and insects, organophosphates are the active ingredients of deadly nerve
gases such as sarin and VX, and even low-level exposure can damage the nervous
system.
Signs of organophosphate
poisoning include headache, tiredness, upset stomach and breathing trouble, all
similar to the symptoms shown by the students and teachers at the Kabul
schools.
Meanwhile, a Muslim
religious leader was killed by a bomb attack and a US service member died in
fighting Wednesday in turbulent southern Afghanistan, officials said.
Aid group Oxfam,
meanwhile, said it was suspending operations in the northeastern province of
Badakhshan following the deaths of two employees and a local volunteer in a
roadside bomb attack.
Also Wednesday,
Afghanistan's central bank tried to shore up confidence in Kabul Bank, the
country's biggest financial institution, after its top executives resigned amid
allegations of mismanagement and corruption.
The Muslim leader, Mohammad
Hassan Taimuri, was killed in Kandahar city by a remote-detonated bomb hidden
on a motorcycle that exploded in a downtown square, Kandahar police chief Sher
Mohammed Zazai said. One other person was killed in the attack and two people
were wounded, Zazai said.
There was no immediate
claim of responsibility, and it was not clear why anyone would target Taimuri,
who was responsible for managing Islamic religious institutions.
However, Taleban
insurgents who are highly active in Kandahar routinely target government
figures and institutions, often indiscriminately. The city is a longtime
stronghold of the hard-line movement and the focus of the American-led
operation against the insurgents.
NATO gave no other
information about the U.S. serviceman's death, the first of the new month and
the 20th in less than five days. The U.S. death toll for August stood at 56 _
three-quarters of them in the second half of the month as the Taliban fought
back against U.S. pressure.
Oxfam also gave no details
about the three Afghans killed, but said it was reviewing security arrangements
and had no plans to suspend its overall operations in Afghanistan, which range
from running schools to distributing livestock.
Badakhshan's deputy
governor, Shamsul Rahman, said the three were killed Saturday when their
vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb suspected to have been set by Taliban
insurgents.
Formerly relatively
peaceful, Badakhshan has seen rising insurgent violence, and in early August, a
group of suspected insurgents in the province murdered 10 aid workers — six
Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton — who had spent two weeks
giving vision and other medical care to impoverished villagers in neighboring
Nuristan province.
In another development, Bosnia's
Parliament on Wednesday endorsed a decision by the country's presidency to send
a 45-man strong infantry unit to join the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.
The Bosnian Army unit will
be deployed in October in Helmand province in southern of Afghanistan and will
guard the Danish contingent's military base.
