KABUL, Aug 25: About 100,000 new school books were destroyed in central Afghanistan Monday when “enemies” set alight a truck that was transporting them to the volatile south, education officials said.

A rocket was fired into the truck in the central province of Ghazni and the vehicle was set alight, provincial education ministry spokesman Mehran Mehri said.

“The truck was carrying more than 100,000 textbooks from the ministry of education ... but it was torched by the enemies and all the books including religious books have been burnt,” the national education ministry said in a statement.

Afghan officials blame the near-daily insurgent attacks on “the enemies of Afghanistan,” a phrase that refers largely to the Taliban but includes other extremist outfits.

The Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, are leading an insurgency that focuses attacks on Afghan and international security forces and government institutions.

The insurgents have in particular targeted schools, one of the successes of development since the fall of the Taliban regime which sorely neglected the education sector and refused to allow girls into school. Violence left 220 pupils and teachers dead in 2007, the education ministry said last month.

The UN’s children’s organisation UNICEF said in April that there had been 236 attacks on schools in 2007.

The Pajhwok Afghan News agency reported that the books destroyed Monday were produced with support from the World Bank and the US and Danish governments.—AFP