KABUL: The Taliban ordered girls’ secondary schools in Afghanistan to shut Wednesday just hours after they reopened, sparking heartbreak and confusion over the policy reversal by the hardline Islamist group.

The U-turn was announced after thousands of girls resumed lessons for the first time since August, when the Taliban seized control of the country and imposed harsh restrictions on women.

The education ministry offered no coherent explanation even as officials held a ceremony in the capital to mark the start of the academic year, saying it was a matter for the country’s leadership.

“In Afghanistan, especially in the villages, the mindsets are not ready,” spokesman Aziz Ahmad Rayan told reporters.

“We have some cultural restrictions... but the main spokesmen of the Islamic Emirate will offer better clarifications.”

A Taliban source told AFP the decision came after a meeting late Tuesday by senior officials in the southern city of Kandahar, the movement’s de facto power centre and conservative spiritual heartland.

Wednesday’s date for girls to resume school had been announced weeks earlier by the ministry, with spokesman Rayan saying the Taliban had a “responsibility to provide education and other facilities to our students”.

They insisted that pupils aged 12 to 19 would be segregated — even though most Afghan schools are already same-sex — and would operate according to Islamic principles. Crestfallen girls at Zarghona High School in the capital, Kabul, tearfully packed up their belongings after teachers halted the lesson. “I see my students crying and reluctant to leave classes,” said Palwasha, a teacher at Omara Khan girls’ school in Kabul.

“It is very painful to see them crying.”

US special envoy to Afghanistan Rina Amiri said the move “weakens confidence in the Taliban commitments”.

It “further dashes the hopes of families for a better future for their daughters,” she tweeted.