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Roundup: Terrorists blamed for poisoning students, Taliban torches clinic in Afghanistan

Xinhua, April 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

Police in Afghanistan's western Herat province on Sunday blamed terrorists for poisoning students of a school in provincial capital Herat city and causing some 100 pupils affected on Saturday.

"Terrorists poisoned some 100 students of Fatah School in Herat city on Saturday and so far one person has been arrested in the case," Herat's provincial police chief Abdul Majid Rozi told reporters.

The perpetrators by conducting such crimes attempt to terrorize people, the official said.

The majority of the students, after receiving medical treatments, had been discharged from hospital on Saturday evening, while 11 students are still being hospitalized in a local hospital, the police official added.

The students, according to the official, fell ill after eating chickpeas from a street seller close to the school's gate and the street seller has been arrested for investigation.

Preliminary results of the investigation indicate that the gruesome incident was organized by terrorists, the provincial police chief said, adding "These are insurgents who want to kill our children."

Taliban militants fighting the government have yet to make comment.

Parents of the affected students have demanded the government to thoroughly probe the case and bring to justice those behind the heinous crime.

In the past couple of years, students of several schools in different provinces had been mysteriously poisoned.

Meanwhile, another attack targeting the civil service sector has occurred in eastern Afghanistan's Laghman province.

Taliban militants, according to government officials, torched a health clinic in the province on Sunday.

"A group of Taliban militants under their commander Mullah Tarab set on fire a clinic in Alinegar district in the wee hours of Sunday and made their good escape," provincial government spokesman Sarhadi Zawak told reporters.

Parts of Laghman province including the mountainous Alinegar district has been the scene of Taliban-led militancy over the past couple of years. Endi