6.1.8. Education personnel

According to the scholar Samra Nazeer, in Pakistan, extremist groups have repeatedly targeted schools as part of a strategy ‘aimed at stopping education, weakening communities, and spreading fear’. According to the same source, education systems in conflict-prone regions face additional burdens, including lack of resources, insecurity, teacher shortages, and disrupted learning. School attacks and their consequences on the communities and teachers affected the capacity to support children’s education.1882

Some recorded attacks on schools, educational personnel, and students, carried out in the period between 2024 and 2026 in Pakistan, include inter alia:

• On 1 November 2024, an attack targeting police guarding a vaccination drive was carried out in Mastung (a town in Balochistan). At least nine people, including five school children were killed and 23 injured at a nearby girls’ school.1883

• On 7 May 2025, the Masjid-e- Markaz Taiba religious school in Muridke, Punjab province, was attacked as India launched a military operation on Pakistan.1884

• On 21 May 2025, a suicide attack on a school was carried out in Balochistan1885 with at least six people killed and dozens wounded.1886

• According to media sources, a vaccination team was attacked at a local school by a group of civilian men and women on 3 November 2025 in Lahore. Seven people involved in the attack were arrested by police.1887

• On 10 November 2025, a Pakistani militant group Jaish-ul-Hind (JuH) attacked Cadet College in Wana – South Waziristan district near the Afghan border – and captured more than 600 cadets and teachers.1888 Two days later, all teachers and students were rescued by the Pakistan Army while the attackers were killed.1889

• On 11 December 2025, an explosion of a government primary school in the Khushali area of Ayaz Kot in North Waziristan was carried out by unidentified militants. The destroyed institution was the only functional primary school in the area for more than 600 students.1890

• On 15 December 2025, the Express Tribune reported on an attack on a girls’ primary school by unidentified armed men in the village of Epi in North Waziristan..1891

• On 3 January 2026, a drone attack was carried out on Al-Fatah Public High School in the Huso Khel area of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, injuring the school principal and teachers.1892

• On 15 January 2026, a female teacher was shot dead by unidentified assailants outside a school’s premises in Balochistan.1893

• The attacks on schools and educational personnel resulted in school closures. For example, in December 2024, Pakistani authorities closed all private and public schools in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Lahore after receiving intelligence of possible suicide attacks by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. Officials say the closures were set on the 10th anniversary of the 2014 Army Public School (APS) massacre in Peshawar.1894 In May 2025, Al Jazeera reported that authorities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir closed more than 1 000 religious schools over fears of possible retaliatory military action from India over last week’s deadly attack in the disputed region.1895

Since 2007, over 1 000 schools were destroyed, and more than 300 teachers were killed in Pakistan as part of the TTP’s systematic campaign against education..1896 

In November 2025, the Punjab School Education Department issued an urgent directive to tighten security across all government and private schools in the province.1897 Furthermore, Punjab Health Minister and Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Law and Order, Khawaja Salman Rafique, directed the School Education Department to introduce security measures, including enforced boundary walls, guard training, and other essential security procedures across educational institutions in the province.1898 The new safety protocols for all schools in Punjab was issued in January 2026.1899