It was a day like no other, a city famous for its cultural vibrancy, was now covered with pools of blood on the ground and walls covered in pockmarks from hundreds of bullets. It is a senseless act of unspeakable brutality that has claimed lives of innocent young children in their school. The massacre of innocent children horrified a country already weary of unending terrorist attacks. With its chilling echoes, the terrorist attack in Peshawar traumatized a scarred city that has suffered intense Taliban violence since the insurgency erupted seven years ago.
In the worst attack to have hit the country in years, militants from the Tehreek-e-Taliban, a Pakistani militant group trying to overthrow the government, attacked Army Public School in Peshawar, which left at least 141 people dead, of which 132 were children and nine were staff members. Another 121 students and three staff members were wounded. The wounded were treated in hospitals as frantic parents searched for news of their children.
Witnesses said the militants scaled the rear wall of the campus and targeted the auditorium where many children had gathered for a function. Bursts of bullets from automatic assault rifles cut down those tried to flee.
A 14-year-old, Mehran Khan, said about 400 students were in the hall when the gunmen broke through the doors and started shooting. They shot one of the teachers in the head and then set her on fire and shouted “God is great!” as she screamed, added Khan, who has survived by playing dead. From there, they went to classrooms and other parts of the school.
Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to media, saying that six suicide bombers had carried out the attack in revenge for the killings of Taliban members at the hands of Pakistani authorities.
“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.” “We targeted their kids so that they could know how it feels when they hit our kids,” Khurasani said. He said the attackers were advised not to target “underage” children but did not elaborate on what that meant.
The violence also underscored the vulnerability of Pakistani schools, which was dramatically exposed in the attack two years ago on Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl shot in the head by a Taliban gunman outside her school in Swat Valley for daring to speak up about girls’ rights. She survived, becoming a Nobel Prize laureate and global advocate for female education but out of security concerns has never returned to Pakistan.
Pakistan’s policy-makers are struggling to come to grips with various shades of militants have often cited a “lack of consensus” and “large pockets of sympathy” for religious militants as a major stumbling-block.
If the Pakistani Taliban extremists had hoped the attack would cause the government to ease off its military offensive that began in June in the country’s tribal region, it appeared to have the opposite effect. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged to step up the campaign that — along with U.S. drone strikes — has targeted the militants.”The fight will continue. No one should have any doubt about it,” Sharif said. “We will take account of each and every drop of our children’s blood.”
Taliban fighters have struggled to maintain their potency in the face of the military operation. They vowed a wave of violence in response to the operation, but until Tuesday, there had only been one major attack by a splinter group near the Pakistan-India border in November.
The incident recalled the 2004 siege of a school in Russia’s Beslan by Chechen militants which ended in the death of more than 330 people, half of them children.
Dreadful Horror Witnessed by Innocent Children:
Children who escaped say the militants went from one classroom to another, shooting indiscriminately. One boy told reporters he had been with a group of 10 friends who tried to run away and hide. He was the only one to survive. Others described seeing pupils lying dead in the corridors.
A student who escaped and a police official on the scene earlier said that at one point, about 200 students were being held hostage.
“My son was in uniform in the morning. He is in a casket now,” wailed one parent, Tahir Ali, as he came to the hospital to collect the body of his 14-year-old son Abdullah. “My son was my dream. My dream has been killed,” he added.
One of the wounded students, Abdullah Jamal, said that he was with a group of 8th, 9th and 10th graders who were getting first-aid instructions and training with a team of Pakistani army medics when the violence began for real. Panic broke out when the shooting began.
Another student, Amir Mateen, said they locked the door from the inside when they heard the shooting but gunmen blasted through the door anyway and started shooting.
By evening, funeral services were already being held for many of the victims as clerics announced the deaths over mosque loudspeakers.
Deadly attacks in Pakistan:
16 December 2014: Taliban attack on school in Peshawar leaves at least 135 people dead, most of them children
22 September 2013: Militants linked to the Taliban kill at least 80 people at a church in Peshawar, in one of the worst attacks on Christians.
10 January 2013: Militant bombers target the Hazara Shia Muslim minority in the city of Quetta, killing 120 at a snooker hall and on a street.
28 May 2010: Gunmen attack two mosques of the minority Ahmadi Islamic sect in Lahore, killing more than 80 people.
18 October 2007: Twin bomb attack at a rally for Benazir Bhutto in Karachi leaves at least 130 dead. Unclear if is Taliban behind attack.
There is no deeper depravity than that shown by these callous killers. To shout “Allah hu Akbar” and then open fire on innocents is to show how far they have come from Islam. World leaders have also voiced disgust at the attack, which even the Afghan Taliban has criticized.
