KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: Afghan authorities have arrested 10 Taliban insurgents who threw acid in the faces of schoolgirls in southern Afghanistan, an official said on Tuesday.

President Hamid Karzai ordered the arrest of the culprits and said they would be executed in public after the attack on eight schoolgirls and four female teachers in the southern city of Kandahar this month.

General Mohammad Daud Daud, the deputy interior minister tasked to deal with incident, said authorities had arrested 10 men in recent days in connection to the attack.

"The attack was the work of the Taliban and we have not finalised our investigation," Daud told reporters in Kandahar.

The Taliban barred girls from education while they were in power from 1996 until U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the hardline Islamist movement in 2001, but the militants denied any involvement in the acid attack.

Violence has surged to its worst level this year in Afghanistan since the Taliban's removal. The ongoing insecurity, as well as attacks targeting schools and teachers, have stopped tens of thousands of Afghan students attending classes.

All I wanted was to go to school, to make my father proud, to honor my mother, my God. After the Taliban left, they said it was safe for us to learn again, to read poetry, to learn calculus, to number the stars, to learn the body so that I may someday heal others.

Our attackers will be executed. I do not know if my parents and brothers will attend, whether watching those men die will avenge what has been done to me in God's name. The God of my father smiled upon his daughters who studied and learned, who wanted to become part of a new Afghanistan, one where we need not fear the rule of theocracy built upon a vision of a vengeful, angry God.

It is only my face. It is not my mind, right? I can still think, can still dream. But now, I cannot see. My eyes are gone. Perhaps that is for the best; that way I will not see the people in the street recoil from my ugliness. But how can I know the things that are available only to those who can see? Where has my sky gone? And what of my education? Who will teach me?

I hadn't really thought about boys. Not yet. Mother tells me that a young man is in my future, after I have completed my education. "You are beautiful," she has told me many, many times. Why does she not say it now? I can hear her wipe the tears from her cheeks, as she strokes my hand. Sometimes, her tears dampen my flesh.

More information is being released.