ISLAMABAD - PAKISTAN on Monday partially reopened schools shut nationwide following a suicide attack on a university campus and a spike in Taleban-linked attacks in which nearly 200 people have died this month.

'All 417 schools under the federal education directorate reopened on Monday. Provinces and private schools are reopening institutions according to their own circumstances,' education ministry spokesman Atiqur Rehman said.

The vast majority of schools in Pakistan's two most populous and developed provinces, Punjab and Sindh, had reopened and those in the insurgency-hit North West Frontier Province would do so on November 2, Mr Rehman told AFP.

On Sunday, gunmen shot dead the education minister of the southwestern Baluchistan province, where separatist rebels are fighting for independence and which has a history of Islamist and sectarian violence.

'The provincial government decided to close all schools in Baluchistan again for three days after initially deciding they should reopen,' said Mr Rehman.

But most private schools in the capital Islamabad remained shuttered. 'We have not been provided security by the government so we decided to keep our schools closed for another week in the interest of students,' said Chaudhry Ghufran, president of a private schools association in Islamabad. -- AFP