Islamabad, Dec 17: Children were the majority of the 148 people killed Tuesday in a Taliban attack on a school run by the Pakistani army in the northwestern city of Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan.
The fatalities included 132 students and nine school employees, the military's director of public information, Gen. Asim Bajwa, told a press conference.
Another 122 students were wounded, as well as nine of the soldiers who retook the school from the insurgents. More than 900 people were inside the compound at the start of the assault, Bajwa said.
Seven Taliban fighers dressed in army uniforms entered the school through a back door shortly before midday, police spokesperson Seid Wali said. The attackers hurled grenades and fired burst of gunfire as they went from classroom to classroom, Wali added.
One of the students, a 14-year-old boy, told The Express Tribune that two men burst into his classroom and began shooting indiscriminately.
The Pakistani army launched an operation to liberate the school, which serves grades 1-10, but progress was slow as the troops had to contend with explosives planted inside by the attackers.
Soldiers eliminated the last of the insurgents by 6:20 p.m., authorities said. Television stations broadcast scenes of chaos around the school and the sounds of explosions and gunfire were clearly audible in the background.
The attackers never planned to take hostages and were simply out to kill as many people as possible, Gen. Bajwa said.
After securing the school, the military embarked on a anti-insurgent sweep across Peshawar and the surrounding province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Pakistan's main Taliban group, known as the TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was in reprisal for the what the militants claimed was the targeting of their families by the military.
A counterinsurgency operation six months ago in the Khyber and North Waziristan areas left more than 1,100 insurgents dead, according to Pakistan's army.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the assault on the school "a national crisis", declared three days of mourning and convened a meeting Wednesday in Peshawar with leaders of all parties represented in the Pakistani parliament.
US President Barack Obama condemned the attack, as did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan's Ashraf Ghani.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 for her outspoken advocacy on behalf of girls' education and went on to share this year's Nobel Peace Prize, said she was "heartbroken by this senseless and coldblooded act of terror in Peshawar."
Earlier Post:
Carnage in Pakistan school as Taliban attack kills children
Peshawar, Dec 16: In the bloodiest terror attack in Pakistan in years, around 150 people, mostly children, were today killed by heavily-armed Taliban suicide bombers who stormed an army-run school here and took several hostages, a throwback to the 2004 Beslan school siege by Chechen rebels.
A group of 8 Arabic-speaking attackers, wearing para- military Frontier Corps uniforms, entered the Army Public School on Warsak Road around 10.30 AM (local time) and started the massacre of innocents, spraying bullets indiscriminately, going from classroom-to-classroom.
They also took several hostages using them as human shield. The death toll in the attack has reached 160 with a majority of them being students, official sources told PTI. At least 122 others have been injured.
They said that so far six militants have died -- four of them blew themselves up while two were shot dead by security forces. Two militants are still alive.
20 teachers, including the principal, and 34 students are hostages and the operation is continuing, an official of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak's office said.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the attack, one of the worst in recent years.
The Taliban spokesman claimed that its 6 suicide bombers attacked army school, saying it was a revenge for the army's operation against militants in the North Waziristan tribal area close to Peshawar.
"We want them to feel our pain," the spokesman said.
World leaders united in condemning the attack as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif termed it a "national tragedy" and chaired a security meeting in Peshawar where he was briefed about the attack and operation.
Sharif reiterated that military operation 'Zarb-e-azab' to flush out terrorists from the country's tribal belt will continue.
"It's a sheer act of cowardice...the country should unite to combat terrorism," he added.
Army Chief General Raheel Sharif also reached Peshawar to monitor the situation.
In one of the most gruesome attacks in recent years against children anywhere in the world, the militants went from classroom-to-classroom shooting indiscriminately at the shocked students, eyewitnesses told local media.
One rescued student told reporters that the attackers had long beards and they were wearing 'shalwar kamiz'.
He said they were speaking Arabic and looked like foreigners.
In the incident in Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia, at least 32 armed individuals stormed a school and took more than 1,000 hostages, majority of them children. Over 330 people, mostly children, were killed in the assault.
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