At least 17 female students from the Bibi Hajira high school in northern Takhar province have been hospitalised Thursday with claims of gas poisoning, local officials said.
The incident is being investigated by police in the provincial capital Taloquan where the school is based, according to the head of Takhar provincial health Hafizullah Safi.
Safi told TOLOnews that the girls were suffering from both physical and mental ailments.
"Their health conditions are not good and the medicines will be directed to them according to doctor directions. Also, their mental state is not good and we will treat both conditions of the students," he said.
The school director Abdulhai said the symptoms of each student were different.
"These students are in different situations. Some of them are senseless, some of them are screaming and yelling due to stomach pain," he told TOLOnews.
One of the students at the school said it was not clear what happened to make the girls fall ill.
"Where we in school and we don't know how this all happened," one of the school student said.
An angry relative said that nothing was being done to capture the perpetrators.
"This is fourth of fifth time that our daughters and our sisters are being poisoned in their schools. And those who are doing such actions are being released after short time and coming back to their homes," he said.
Bibi Hajira hospitalised up to 127 girls last May with suspected poisoning, but the results of the investigation were never officially confirmed by the Afghan health or security officials. On the contrary, reports later suggested the symptoms were psychosomatic.
In the weeks which followed Bibi Hajira's first incident at least six more cases of suspected poisoning occurred in girls schools in Afghanistan's north – mainly in Takhar.
By early June, Takhar province had offered 200,000 afs (about $4000) to anyone who could help find who was poisoning the students.
Members of parliament and provincial officials blamed the Taliban, who denied any links to the poisonings and released their own condemnation of the incidents.
On June 6, the National Directorate of Security arrested 15 suspects in Takhar including two 17-year-old Taloqan schoolgirls and released tapes with their alleged confessions. However, Newsweek reported in July that the two girls had been severely bullied into making the confessions.
It is not clear what has happened to the 15 suspects who were arrested.