Topic: Taliban Kills 2 Sisters For Crime Of Teaching

New York Times
December 10, 2006
Pg. 27


GHWANDO, Afghanistan, Dec. 9 (AP) — Following up on a death threat, Taliban militants broke into a house and fatally shot two teachers and three other family members, bringing to 20 the number of educators killed in attacks this year, officials and a relative said Saturday.
A NATO spokesman, meanwhile, said an investigation had begun into allegations that British troops fired at civilians, killing one and wounding six, after a suicide-bomb attack on their convoy last weekend.
The Taliban attack on two teachers, who were sisters living in the same house, happened overnight in a village in the Narang district of eastern Kunar Province. After climbing over the home’s outer wall with a ladder, gunmen killed the two teachers, their mother and grandmother and a 20-year-old male relative and wounded a younger male relative, said Dr. Ghaleb, a family relative who, like many Afghans, goes by one name.
The sisters had been warned in a letter from the Taliban to quit teaching, said Gulam Ullah Wekar, the provincial education director. It said their work went against Islam, and if they continued they would “end up facing the penalty.”