UN official: Taliban to notify on secondary school for girls

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Omar Abdi, who visited Kabul last week, told reporters at U.N. headquarters that five of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces -- Balkh, Jawzjan and Samangan in the northwest, Kunduz in the northeast and Urozgan in the southwest -- are already allowing girls to attend secondary school.

He said the Taliban’s education minister told him they are working on “a framework” to allow all girls to continue their schooling beyond the sixth grade, which should be published “between a month and two.” “As I speak to you today, millions of girls of secondary school age are missing out on education for the 27th consecutive day,” Abdi said. “We are urging them not to wait. Any day that we wait -- it’s a day lost for those girls that are out of school.” Abdi said that in every meeting he pressed the Taliban “to let girls resume their learning,” calling it “critical for the girls themselves and for the country as a whole.” IS claims responsibility for mosque bombing

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing on a Shiite mosque in southern Afghanistan that killed 47 people and wounded scores more. IS said in a statement posted late Friday on social media that two of the group’s members shot and killed security guards manning the entrance of the Fatimiya mosque in Kandahar province. One detonated his explosives at the entrance of the mosque and the other inside. IS’s news agency Amaq in a statement named the attackers —Anas al-Khurasani and Abu Ali al-Baluchi.