INSURGENTS BURN DOWN AFGHAN GIRLS SCHOOL

September 29, 2003 – (AP) Suspected Taliban insurgents set fire to two girls' schools in northern Afghanistan, a local official said Monday, in the second such attack in recent days.

Two tents housing schools for girls in the Charar Bolak district in Balkh province were destroyed in the blaze late Sunday, said Abdul Sabur Khan, a local military official.

It is the first such attack in the Balkh province, considered a stronghold of the anti-Taliban northern alliance that helped a U.S.-led coalition oust the hardline militia and their al-Qaida allies in 2001.

Suspected insurgents also delivered leaflets or ``night letters'' in Balkh warning people ``not to send girls to schools,'' Khan said. The Taliban banned girls from school and barred women from getting jobs.

On Saturday, insurgents destroyed a girls' school in eastern Nangarhar province. Earlier this month another school was burned down just a few miles south of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Elsewhere, fighting between rival local commanders in a northern Afghan province killed one person and wounded at least three, a spokesman for one of two key factions in the region said Monday.

Local commanders loyal to ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and Tajik leader Atta Mohammed began fighting Friday in northern Faryab province, Salam Palawan, a key commander for Mohammed in the area said over satellite telephone.

Palawan said 800 of Dostum's soldiers attacked Mohammed's troops from three directions using mortars, multiple rocket launchers and heavy machine guns.
One civilian caught in the crossfire was killed and three were wounded, Palawan said.

On Monday, Defense Ministry spokesman Gulbuddin, who goes with a single name, said that a joint commission representing the ministry and both warring factions would try to negotiate a truce.