[The Army Public
School in Peshawar is part of a network of schools that the military operates
in garrison towns and major cities across Pakistan. Students from army families
have preferential access, but many of the students and teachers in the schools
come from civilian backgrounds.]
By Ismail
Khan and Salman Masood
 |
Vigil in different cities for
#PeshawarAttack victims.
#
|
PESHAWAR, Pakistan —
Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed into a military-run school in
northwestern Pakistan on
Tuesday, killing scores of teachers and schoolchildren and fighting an
eight-hour gun battle with the security forces, officials said.
At least 145
people were dead by the time the last of the nine attackers was killed,
government officials and medical workers said.
A spokesman for
the Pakistani
Taliban confirmed that his group was responsible for the attack
and said it was in retaliation for the military’s offensive against militants
in the North Waziristan tribal
district.
The militants’
assault started at about 10 a.m., when nine gunmen disguised as paramilitary
soldiers climbed the rear wall of the Army Public School and Degree College, a
school of about 2,500 pupils, including boys and girls, a senior security
official said.
The attackers
stormed through the school, lobbing hand grenades and indiscriminately
shooting. In a chilling echo of the Beslan school siege in Russia in 2004, some
of the worst violence occurred in the school’s main auditorium, where an army
instructor had been giving children first aid lessons, officials and students
said.
“We were in the
education hall when militants barged in, shooting,” said Zeeshan, a student,
speaking at a hospital. “Our instructor asked us to duck and lay down and then
I saw militants walking past rows of students shooting them in the head.”
Mushtaq Ghani,
the information minister for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, confirmed that most
of the victims had been killed by gunshots to the head.
As Pakistani
security forces responded, some of the attackers blew themselves up while
others were killed by members of the army’s Special Service Group commando
unit.
Desperate
parents, meanwhile, rushed to local hospitals or gathered outside the school
gates seeking news of their children. One of them, Muhammad Arshad, described
his relief after his son Ehsan was rescued army commandos.
“I am thankful to
God for giving him a second life,” he said.
But at the
Combined Military Hospital, the bodies of schoolchildren were lined up on the
floor, most of them with single gunshot wounds to the head.
A 7-year-old
student, Afaq, said militants had entered his classroom and immediately started
shooting. “They killed our teacher,” he said, breaking down in tears.
“These attackers
were not in the mood to take hostages,” a security official said. “They were
there to kill and this is what they did.”
Some students
managed to flee. Television coverage showed panic-stricken pupils in green
sweaters and blazers, the school uniform, being evacuated from the compound.
Others were wounded and were taken to another hospital in the area, Lady
Reading, where parents also gathered looking for news of their children.
Lady Reading
Hospital later published a list of students known to have died; many of the
dead have not yet been identified.
By late
afternoon, the army said it had cleared three sections of the school compound
and that troops were pushing through the remaining sections. After the last of
the militants was killed, officials said, soldiers were sweeping the compound
for explosives.
Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived
in Peshawar, where the authorities declared three days of mourning. Mr. Sharif
announced an emergency meeting of all political parties in the city for
Wednesday. In a statement, the foreign ministry said it was “deeply shocked” by
the attack but that the government was undeterred in its fight against
the Taliban.
“These terrorists
are enemies of Pakistan, enemies of Islam and enemies of humanity,” the
statement said.
The British prime
minister, David Cameron,
called the attack “deeply shocking” and said it was “horrifying that children
are being killed simply for going to school.” The American
ambassador to Pakistan, Richard G. Olson, said the United States “stands in
solidarity with the people of Pakistan.”
And Malala
Yousafzai, the teenage education campaigner from northwestern
Pakistan who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a ceremony last week, said
she was “heartbroken by this senseless and coldblooded act of terror.”
“Innocent
children in their school have no place in horror such as this,” Ms. Yousafzai
said in a statement. “I, along with millions of others around the world, mourn
these children, my brothers and sisters — but we will never be defeated.”
The Army Public
School in Peshawar is part of a network of schools that the military operates
in garrison towns and major cities across Pakistan. Students from army families
have preferential access, but many of the students and teachers in the schools
come from civilian backgrounds.
The assault came
at a time of political turbulence in Pakistan. The opposition politician Imran Khan,
whose party controls the provincial government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, has been
staging protest rallies in major cities in a bid to unseat Mr. Sharif, claiming
that Mr. Sharif’s supporters rigged the 2013 elections.
Mr. Khan has
criticized army operations in the tribal areas and called on the government to
negotiate with the militants instead of fighting them, a stance that has
attracted wide criticism.
The Pakistani
Taliban, always a loose and chaotic coalition of militant groups, have come
under increased pressure this year because of internal frictions and the
military’s continuing operation in North Waziristan, which started in June
following an audacious attack on the Karachi airport.
The military says
that the offensive, officially known as Operation Zarb-e-Azb, has resulted in
the death of 1,800 militants and cleared much of North Waziristan, the region’s
most notorious hub of militant activities.
Still, the school
attack on Tuesday demonstrated that the Taliban remain willing and able to
strike at vulnerable civilian targets.
Ihsanullah Tipu
Mehsud contributed reporting from Peshawar, and Declan Walsh from London.
