The Taliban has now resorted to “gas attack” to target girls as militants take to increasingly vicious methods to terrorise young women out of education, a news report in The Independent said on Wednesday.

It was unclear if the incident was a deliberate attack on the school, but the report said that the Taliban was blamed after 89 pupils were poisoned in Afghanistan’s Mahmud Raqi village in Kapisa province on Tuesday.

Zemeri Bashary, Interior Ministry spokesman, said officials suspected some sort of gas poisoning and police were investigating. NATO accused the Taliban this week of using white phosphorus.

According to headmistress Mossena, there was a strange odour which engulfed the courtyard as girls began retching uncontrollably. It was the third such attack against a girls' school in Afghanistan in as many weeks.

Police officials blamed Taliban sympathisers. “It looks like something was sprayed in the school but so far no one has been arrested,” said Matiullah Safi, the provincial police chief.

The incident comes just days after girls complained of similar symptoms at a school in Charikar, north of Kabul. Last November, more than a dozen girls and several teachers at the Mirwais School had acid thrown in their faces on the outskirts of Kandahar.