Girl from SCA school killed by a rocket
A 14 year old girl was killed, and two 9 year old girls were wounded when a rocket hit their house in the village Sakaz Tapa, in Kunduz province. All three girls were students at a school run by SCA. The family of the girls says that people in the village live in fear because of the escalating military conflict.
The incident took place in the afternoon of the 20th of April. The girls were hiding in their house when it was hit by a rocket. According to the villagers the rocket was shot from a compound of the Afghan army. The house where the girls were hiding is close to a Community Based School that SCA is running in the village. When the attack took place the school was closed, since it only operates in the morning.
-This is a very tragic incident and we express our deepest sympathy to this hard-hit family. Every day we hear about how children in Afghanistan suffer from the armed conflict, and in this particular case the children affected by such a tragedy are students in one of our own schools. It makes all of us in SCA feel deeply moved, says Shah Mahmood, acting Country Director of SCA.
Staff from SCA has been in contact with the family to express condolences, and has also visited the wounded girls at the public hospital in Kunduz City.
Sakaz Tapa village, in the Archi district, is located in a remote area 75 kilometers from the city of Kunduz, and close to the border of Tajikistan. The Archi district is an unsecure area were heavy fighting recently has been going on. The SCA-school in the village has 135 students, among them 71 are girls.
On the same day, the 20th of April, a school run by SCA in the Khan Abad district in Kunduz was affected by gunfire between insurgent and government forces. The building where school books were stored was destroyed.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) is an important actor in the education sector in Afghanistan. In 2014 more than 70 000 students studied in schools run by SCA. The overwhelming majority of them in any of the 433 community based schools SCA is running.
Bjorn Lindh