At least 132 students and nine staff members were killed on Tuesday when Taliban gunmen broke into a school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and opened fire, said witnesses, in the bloodiest massacre the country has seen for years.
More than eight hours after militants slipped into the heavily guarded compound through a back entrance, the army declared the operation to flush them out over, and said that all nine insurgents had been killed.
On Tuesday night the Pakistan military said it had launched massive air strikes in its remote border region against the Taliban in retaliation for the massacre.
Pakistan’s army chief of staff, Gen Raheel Shariff, tweeted that “massive air strikes” had been carried out in the Khyber region as the school was being cleared of attackers.
The attack on a military-run high school attended by more than 1,100 students, many of them children of army personnel, struck at the heart of Pakistan’s military establishment, and is an action certain to enrage the country’s powerful army.
Wounded children taken to nearby hospitals said most victims died when gunmen, suicide vests strapped to their bodies, entered the compound and opened fire indiscriminately on boys, girls and their teachers.
Crying in pain
“One of my teachers was crying, she was shot in the hand and she was crying in pain,” said Shahrukh Khan (15) who was shot in both legs but survived by hiding under a bench.
“One terrorist then walked up to her and started shooting her until she stopped making any sound. All around me my friends were lying injured and dead.”
The Taliban, waging war against Pakistan in order to topple the government and set up an Islamic state, immediately claimed responsibility.
"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females," said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. "We want them to feel the pain."
As night fell on Peshawar, a teeming, volatile city near the Afghan border, security forces wrapped up an operation that lasted more than eight hours and involved intense gun battles. The military said about 960 pupils and staff were evacuated.
The Taliban said the gunmen had been equipped with suicide vests and at least three explosions were heard inside the high school at the height of the massacre.
Distraught parents
Outside, as helicopters rumbled overhead, police struggled to hold back distraught parents who were trying to break past a security cordon and get into the school.
Officials said 121 pupils and three staff members were wounded. A local hospital said the dead and injured were aged from 10 to 20 years old.
The United States, Pakistan's ally in its fight against Islamist militants operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan, swiftly condemned the attack.
"This act of terror angers and shakes all people of conscience . . . the perpetrators must be brought to justice," said US secretary of state John Kerry.
Prime minister Nawaz Sharif used strong words to reflect rising anger. "We will take revenge for each and every drop of our children's blood that was spilt today," he said.
Pakistani teenager and Nobel prizewinner Malala Yousafzai, herself a survivor of a Taliban attack in 2012, said she was devastated.
“I am heartbroken by this senseless and cold-blooded act of terror in Peshawar that is unfolding before us,” Malala, who now lives in England, said in a statement. – (Reuters/Guardian)