Islamabad: Following an alert over possible militant attacks, Pakistani authorities have closed all the schools in the country’s largest province, Punjab.

According to media reports a government memo received on Tuesday said that there is an intelligence alert that 13 Taliban fighters from neighbouring Afghanistan were planning suicide attacks on schools in Pakistan.

The province’s education minister, Rana Mashood Ahmad, announced late on Monday that Punjab schools would remain closed till the end of the month. He didn’t cite the government alert but said the closures were due to harsh winter weather and heavy fog in the province.

The warning comes a week after a breakaway Taliban faction attacked a northwestern university and killed 21 people, mostly students.

That university reopened briefly on Monday but then closed indefinitely to give students time to recover from the incident.