Pakistan closes schools in province amid Taliban threats

Pakistani authorities closed all the schools in the country’s largest province

 

Pakistani authorities closed all the schools in the country’s largest province, Punjab, following an alert over possible terrorist attacks.

A government memo says there is intelligence that 13 Taliban fighters from neighboring Afghanistan were planning suicide attacks on schools in Pakistan.

The province’s education minister, Rana Mashood Ahmad, announced Punjab schools would remain closed till the end of the month. The warning comes a week after a breakaway Taliban faction attacked a northwestern university and killed 21 people, mostly students. That university reopened briefly Monday but then closed indefinitely to give students time to recover from the incident.