DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan: Militants detonated a bomb at a girls school in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in the country’s volatile northwest, badly damaging the structure, police said Thursday. No one was harmed in the overnight attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack late Wednesday that targeted the only girls school in Shawa, a town in the North Waziristan district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, local police chief Amjad Wazir said.

UNICEF condemned the bombing as “despicable and cowardly act that could jeopardize the future of many young and talented girls.”

According to the police chief, the attackers first beat up the school guard before setting off the explosives at the private Aafia Islamic Girls Model School, which has 150 students.

Suspicion is likely to fall on Islamic militants and specifically the Pakistani Taliban, who have targeted girls schools in the province in the past, saying that women should not be educated.

In a statement, Abdullah Fadil, the UNICEF representative in Pakistan, said the “destruction of a girls’ school in a remote and underserved area is a heinous crime detrimental to national progress.” He cited Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif statement on Wednesday declaring an education emergency and pledging to work toward enrolling 26 million out-of-school children.

Pakistan witnessed multiple attacks on girls schools until 2019, especially in the Swat Valley and elsewhere in the northwest where the Pakistani Taliban long controlled the former tribal regions. In 2012, the insurgents attacked Malala Yousafzai, a teenage student and advocate for the education of girls who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, were evicted from Swat and other regions in recent years. The TTP are a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

The Taliban takeover in neighboring Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban.

KARACHI: Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves with its central bank surged to $9.12 billion on Thursday, data from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) after Islamabad received the final tranche of $1.1 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last month. 

The SBP confirmed on April 30 that Pakistan had received the final tranche of $1.1 billion as part of a $3 billion IMF loan program it entered last summer. 

The South Asian country is expected to hold discussions this month with an IMF mission for a “larger and longer” program that Islamabad hopes would help avert its macroeconomic crisis. 

“Foreign reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan total $ 9,120.3 million,” the SBP said in a statement. It added that total reserves held by the country stood at $ 14,458.9 million, out of which net foreign reserves worth $ 5,338.6 million were by commercial banks. 

Pakistan has been struggling with a chronic economic crisis since April 2022 that has seen its foreign exchange reserves plummet to historic lows and its national currency depreciate significantly against the US dollar. 

The South Asian country has turned to international financial institutions and multilateral partners to secure external financing in a bid to stave off a balance of payment crisis. 

Desperate to shore its foreign reserves, Pakistan has recently welcomed visits by business delegations and diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Japan, Qatar and Azerbaijan to attract investment. 

Last year Pakistan set up the Special Investment Facilitation Council, a body consisting of Pakistani civilian and military leaders and specially tasked to promote investment in Pakistan. The council is so far focusing on investments in the energy, agriculture, mining, information technology and aviation sectors and specifically targeting Gulf nations.