Pakistan: Taliban attack school, kill over 130, 100 were students
More than 130 people, 100 being students,were killed and 122 others injured in a Taliban seizure of a military-run school in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, according to provincial authorities on Tuesday. The actual death toll numbers of dead and injured are expected to rise as the casualties of the assault are counted.
Flag of Taliban photo public domain
Some 500 students and teachers were in the Army Public School at the time of the attack. Pakistan’s military said most of the civilians escaped, but some had been taken hostage by the assailants. As many as ten terrorists dressed in Pakistani military uniforms entered the school compound at noon. They torched a car at the site and proceeded with a raid on the facility.
“Seven to eight people attacked us, then an army soldier came to us and he asked [the] principal and teachers to take the children out of compound from the back gate. There were thousands [of] students in college. They were moved to auditorium, they can’t come out until the fight is ended,” Arshad Khan, a student at the school, told RT.com.
The Pakistan military responded with armed security, military helicopters and police as they secured the area.
“As the firing started our teacher asked us to bent down and we went to a corner of the class, after one hour when firing reduced, [an] army officer came and rescued us, but as we came out we saw on the way in corridors our friends were lying dead on ground hit by bullets, some with three, some with four bullets. They were bleeding,” another student told the Russia paper.
A military source claims five of the terrorists were killed, one setting off a “suicide vest” with at least one Pakistani soldier killed in the onslaught.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the attack on the school a national tragedy and said he would personally supervise the army operation in Peshawar.
“I can’t stay back in Islamabad. This is a national tragedy unleashed by savages. These were my kids,” he said in a statement.
The provincial government declared three days of mourning over the tragedy.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but claimed it was not targeting the pupils.
“Our suicide bombers have entered the school, they have instructions not to harm the children, but to target army personnel,” Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani told Reuters.
