Extremists Kill 2 at Afghan School for Midwives, but Students Escape

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — A nearly seven-hour assault by extremists on a school for midwives in eastern Afghanistan killed two people and wounded 11 others, but at the end of a harrowing day, authorities managed to avert a far greater tragedy.

Most of the 67 young female students were evacuated quickly or fled to a fortified safe room on the grounds of the school in Jalalabad. Three of them were wounded, according to a police official. In addition, 12 young children in a day care center for the school’s staff escaped harm, authorities said.

Gholam Sanayi Stanikzai, police chief for Nangarhar province, said the attack ended after two suicide attackers, who had been fighting with automatic weapons and grenades, detonated their explosive vests as the police closed in.

Two male employees of the center were killed and five others wounded, he said, and three police officers were wounded, as well. All the students and the children were rescued.

“The reason that it took such a long time to subdue the attack was the presence of women and children inside the center, who were badly scared,” Stanikzai said. “Security forces proceeded very carefully.”

According to witnesses, a large group of the midwifery students barricaded themselves in a safe room. The fate of the children in the day care was unclear for several hours.

A senior police official said three of the students at the center were wounded in the attack.

The attack began about 11 a.m. at the Midwifery Training Center in Jalalabad, as the assailants laid siege to the school. Five explosions were heard at the site, which is in the center of the city in Nangarhar province. Heavy gunfire could be heard after the initial attack, and police special forces units arrived on the scene.

The school’s students, most of them 18 to 19, were enrolled in a two-year midwifery program and lived in a dormitory in the center’s compound.

Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar, initially said that all the young women had been evacuated successfully when the attack began. Witnesses and officers at the scene, however, said that many had been unable to escape and took refuge.

Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the attack bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, whose local affiliate is especially active in Nangarhar and responsible for many suicide attacks there.

The Taliban have recently disavowed attacks on civilian targets and have long refrained from targeting medical facilities or women’s institutions. The Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied the group was behind the attack in a WhatsApp message.

The midwife center is run by the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, and it trains midwives for remote districts, where doctors are rare and most women will not go to male doctors.

It’s close to another midwifery school in Jalalabad that is run by the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee. That organization’s country director, Terje M. Watterdal, said the young women there were all safe but spent the hours of the attack in a safe room as well.