Carnage as Taleban storm Peshawar school, kill 141

 PESHAWAR: Taleban insurgents stormed an army-run school in Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 141 people, almost all of them children, in Pakistan’s bloodiest ever terror attack. Survivors described how the militants went from room to room shooting children as young as 12 during the eight-hour onslaught at the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The attack, claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) as revenge for a major military offensive in the region, was condemned by the US, UN and major Western powers as well as Pakistan’s arch-rival India.

The Pakistani government and military reaffirmed their determination to defeat the TTP, which has killed thousands since it began its insurgency in 2007. Chief military spokesman General Asim Bajwa said 132 students and nine staff were killed, and 125 wounded. This exceeds the 139 killed in blasts targeting former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi in 2007.

Teenage survivor Shahrukh Khan described his narrow escape from the militants as they rampaged through the school, hunting for people to kill. The 16-year-old said he and his classmates ducked below their desks when four gunmen burst into their room. “I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches,” Khan told AFP from the trauma ward of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital. Khan decided to play dead after being shot in both legs, stuffing his tie into his mouth to stifle his screams. “The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again,” he said. “My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me – I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.”

There were around 500 students in the school when the attack started, and Bajwa said the attackers, equipped with ammunition and food to last “days”, only wanted to kill. “The terrorists started indiscriminate firing as they entered the auditorium so they had no intention of taking any hostages”, he told reporters.

The Lady Reading Hospital was thronged with distraught parents weeping uncontrollably as children’s bodies arrived, their school uniforms drenched in blood. Irshadah Bibi, 40, whose 12-year-old son was among the dead, beat her face in grief, throwing herself against an ambulance. “O God, why did you snatch away my son? What is the sin of my child and all these children?” she wept. Funerals of many of the victims had taken place by evening, with the rest to follow today. Sajid Khan, the uncle of 10-year-old student Gul Sher, told AFP his nephew had plans to become a doctor, but instead God had placed him in casket. “We cannot take the revenge from the terrorists but we pray to Allah to take the revenge,” he said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced three days of national mourning and described the attack as a “national tragedy unleashed by savages”. “These were my children. This is my loss. This is the nation’s loss,” he said. Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, herself shot by the Taleban in 2012, said she was “heartbroken” by “the senseless and cold-blooded” killing. US President Barack Obama condemned the attack as “heinous” and said America would stand by Pakistan in its struggle against violent extremism. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of Pakistan’s neighbour and bitter rival India, phoned Sharif to offer condolences, Sharif’s office said.

The school on Peshawar’s Warsak Road is part of the Army Public Schools and Colleges System, which runs schools nationwide. Its students range in age from around 10 to 18. Yesterday’s attack was seen as shocking even by the standards of Pakistan, which has suffered thousands of deaths in bomb and gun attacks since the TTP rose up in 2007. TTP spokesman Muhammad Khorasani said yesterday’s assault was carried out to avenge Taleban fighters and their families killed in the army’s offensive against militant strongholds in North Waziristan. “We are doing this because we want them to feel the pain of how terrible it is when your loved ones are killed,” he said. “We are taking this step so that their families should mourn as ours are mourning.”

The military has hailed the offensive as a major success in disrupting the TTP’s insurgency. More than 1,600 militants have been killed since the launch of operation Zarb-e-Azb in June, according to data compiled by AFP from regular military statements. Talat Masood, a retired general and security analyst, said the attack was intended to weaken the military’s resolve. “The militants know they won’t be able to strike at the heart of the military, they don’t have the capacity. So they are going for soft targets,” Masood told AFP.

The attack began in the morning when the gunmen entered the school and started shooting at random. Army commandos quickly arrived at the scene and started exchanging fire with the gunmen. Students wearing green school uniforms could be seen fleeing the area on Pakistani television. Outside the school, two loud booms of unknown origin were heard coming from the scene in the early afternoon, as Pakistani troops battled with the attackers. Armored personnel carriers were deployed around the school grounds, and a Pakistani military helicopter circled overhead. Pakistani television showed soldiers surrounding the area and pushing people back. Ambulances streamed from the area to local hospitals.

“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.” 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. When the shooting started, Jamal, who was shot in the leg, said nobody knew what was going on in the first few seconds. “Then I saw children falling down who were crying and screaming. I also fell down. I learned later that I have got a bullet,” he said, speaking from his hospital bed. 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 opened fire.