GNA-Taliban gunmen stormed into a Pakistan school Tuesday and killed at least 126 people, most of them children, before army commandos swept in and halted the siege, Pakistan authorities said.
The attack at the Army Public School — a military-run facility in the northwestern city of Peshawar for students in grades 1-10 — began in the early morning when gunmen entered the school and shot at random, police officer Javed Khan said.
Army commandos quickly arrived at the scene and exchanged fire with the gunmen, he said. An intelligence official told the Associated Press that nine militants had been killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
"The operation is completed," Bilal Ahmad Faizi, the head of the state-run rescue organization, announced hours after the attack began.
Mushtaq Ghani, the province's information minister, said most of the dead were children and teens.
Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to news media, saying six suicide bombers carried out the attack in revenge for the killings of Taliban members by Pakistani authorities. Tehreek-e-Taliban is a Pakistani militant group pressing to overthrow the government.
Pakistani army Gen. Asim Bajwa tweeted that "several ops" had been launched by Pakistan after the attack, including 10 airstrikes. Pehsawar sits near the border with Afghanistan, the primary base of operations for the Taliban. Peshawar has been the target of frequent militant attacks in recent years — in September 2013 a twin suicide bomb blast in a Peshawar church killed at least 85 people.
A spokesman for Peshawar Police told the Pakistan Daily Times that 126 people, most of them students, were "martyred" and 124 more were injured. Hospital officials said among the dead were a teacher and a security official with Pakistani paramilitary forces.
Student Abdullah Jamal, who was shot in the leg, said he was with a group of 8th, 9th and 10th graders who were getting first-aid training with Pakistani army medics when the attack began. For the first few seconds, nobody knew what was happening, he said.
"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 from his hospital bed. "All the children had bullet wounds. All the children were bleeding."
Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said "those behind the heinous act will not be spared," The Express Tribune newspaper of Pakistan reported. Sharif, who arrived in Peshawar on Tuesday, described the attack as a "national tragedy," the BBC said, adding that opposition politician Imran Khan said it was "utter barbarism."
President Obama was among numerous heads of state condemning the attack.
"Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims, their families, and loved ones," Obama said in a statement. "By targeting students and teachers in this heinous attack, terrorists have once again shown their depravity. We stand with the people of Pakistan, and reiterate the commitment of the United States to support the government of Pakistan in its efforts to combat terrorism and extremism and to promote peace and stability in the region."
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh, India's minister of home affairs, also condemned the attack. "This dastardly & inhuman attack exposes the real face of terrorism," Singh tweeted.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot in the head by the Taliban two years ago, issued a statement saying that "innocent children in their school have no place in horror such as this." She added that she and millions of others "mourn these children, my brothers and sisters — but we will never be defeated."
Source@ US TODAY