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Pakistan Taliban Attack on Peshawar School Leaves 145 Dead Pakistani Taliban Attack on Peshawar School Leaves 145 Dead
(about 1 hour later)
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. LONDON — First the Pakistani Taliban bombed or burned over 1,000 schools. Then they shot Malala Yousafzai, the courageous teenage advocate for girls’ rights.
At least 145 people were dead by the time the last of nine attackers was killed, government officials and medical workers said. But on Tuesday, the Taliban took their war on education to a ruthless new low, with a concerted assault on a crowded school in Peshawar that killed 145 people, most of them uniformed schoolchildren, in the deadliest single attack in the group’s history.
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. During an eight-hour rampage at the Army Public School and Degree College, a team of nine Taliban gunmen stormed through the corridors and assembly hall, firing at random and throwing grenades. Some children were lined up and slaughtered with shots to the head. Others were gunned down as they cowered under their desks, or forced to watch their teachers being riddled with bullets.
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. Their parents crowded around the school gates, listening to the explosions and gunfire as Pakistani commandos stormed the building, praying their children would survive.
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. With its chilling echoes of Beslan, Russia, where schoolchildren were massacred in 2004, the terror attack in Peshawar deeply traumatized a scarred city that has suffered intense Taliban violence since the insurgency erupted seven years ago. By evening, mosques filled with mourners carrying small wooden coffins, and residents cried openly in the streets.
“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.” A militant spokesman said the attack was retaliation for the continuing military operation against the group in the North Waziristan tribal region. But the image of children’s bodies on the floor of their school auditorium again bore witness to the fact that the Pakistani Taliban’s war has all too often been taken out on the country’s most vulnerable citizens.
Mushtaq Ghani, the information minister for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, confirmed that most of the victims had been killed by gunshots to the head. A wave of outrage crossed national boundaries, with statements of support and sympathy for the victims’ families from around the world.
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. Even other militant groups felt obligated to comment, though probably more cynically. A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, which pushed Afghan civilian casualties to a new high in the past year, posted a Twitter message criticizing the attack as un-Islamic and expressing shared pain with the families.
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 by army commandos. Witnesses in Peshawar said the assault started around 10 a.m., when nine heavily armed militants, disguised in paramilitary uniforms, slipped through a military graveyard and leapt over the back wall of the Army Public School. They rushed through the main building, shooting guns and throwing grenades, before reaching the auditorium where, according to one Pakistani official, a senior army official was giving a first aid course.
“I am thankful to God for giving him a second life,” he said. First they sprayed the students with bullets; then they singled out the survivors for execution. “Our instructor asked us to duck and lay down,” Zeeshan, a student speaking at a hospital. “Then I saw militants walking past rows of students shooting them in the head.”
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. Elsewhere in the school, teachers, realizing what was going on, abruptly canceled classes and exams, and tried to protect their charges. A 7-year-old named Afaq broke down as he described militants’ spraying bullets as they rushed his classroom. “They killed our teacher,” he said, his eyes welling with tears.
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. Although early assessments indicated the gunmen were intent on mounting a long siege — some were carrying stores of food, it was later discovered — a senior security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, insisted they had shown no intention of taking hostages. “They were there to kill and this is what they did,” he said.
“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.” The school turned into a battleground when commandos from the army’s elite Special Services Group attempted to gain control of the school. Cornered militants blew up their suicide vests, causing loud blasts that rang across the city. Some attackers appeared to be speaking in Arabic, others in Pashto, survivors later reported.
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. Some students managed to flee, running from the school wearing their uniform of green sweaters and blazers. Desperate parents, meanwhile, rushed to local hospitals or gathered outside the school gates seeking 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. One of them, Muhammad Arshad, sighed with relief after his son Ehsan was rescued by soldiers. “I am thankful to God for giving him a second life,” he said.
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. Others never made it. Later in the evening, parents clustered around a list of the dead posted outside the Lady Reading hospital.
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. As the fighting continued, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reached Peshawar, where he called an emergency meeting of all political parties for Wednesday. “This is a time for us to show unanimity to root out militancy,” said Ishaq Dar, the federal finance minister.
“These terrorists are enemies of Pakistan, enemies of Islam and enemies of humanity,” the statement said. The siege caps a particularly turbulent year in Pakistan. The polio virus has spread from the tribal belt into the most populous city, Karachi, aided militant attacks on health workers. Political feuding has brought the government, and at times the country’s major cities, to a standstill.
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.” One bright point, in relative terms, has been the North Waziristan offensive of the past summer, which experts say has scattered militants and loosened their grip on part of the tribal belt. But even that success has come with caveats. The fighting sent a wave of more than a million civilians fleeing, in a country already awash with internally displaced people. And many militant cells are reported to have merely set up shop in neighboring districts, or on the other side of the border with Afghanistan.
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.” It had been some relief for Pakistanis that the Pakistani Taliban had, for the most part, failed to deliver the revenge it threatened when the military offensive began in June. Now, after Tuesday’s school massacre, even that hope has been given up.
“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.” Muhammad Khurasani, the Taliban spokesman, said they targeted Peshawar’s Army Public School because it caters to the sons and daughters of serving army personnel (although some civilian pupils also attend).
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. “Our shura decided to target these enemies of Islam right in their homes so they can feel the pain of losing their children,” said Mr. Khurasani in a phone interview.
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. Militancy experts said it shows that, despite several major schisms this year, the Taliban remain a force to be reckoned with.
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. “They want to undermine the Pakistani military’s plan by going after the middle class and their resolve,” said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former Obama administration official. “They want to tell the public that the Taliban can hit them, and hit them hard, and that the military can’t do anything about it.”
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. Globally, the attack generated a wave of opprobrium outstripping even the one that followed the October 2012 Taliban gun attack on Ms. Yousafzai. In a stunning repudiation of her attackers, the teenage activist survived her injuries and last week became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
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. “I am heartbroken by this senseless and coldblooded act of terror,” she said in a statement on Tuesday. “I, along with millions of others around the world, mourn these children, my brothers and sisters — but we will never be defeated.”
Still, the school attack on Tuesday demonstrated that the Taliban remain willing and able to strike at vulnerable civilian targets. Her condemnation was echoed by leaders of the United Nations, Britain, the United States and other countries. In Pakistan, peace activists mounted candlelit vigils while others vented their emotions on social media.
“Blood has been boiling and heart has been crying all day,” wrote Veena Malik Khan, a popular television celebrity, in a Twitter message that described the attackers as “animals.” A newspaper turned its website from color to black and white.
Yet the statements of solidarity and defiance masked a gritty reality. While Pakistan has suffered many bloody atrocities before, the country’s leaders have yet to find a solution to the Taliban insurgency.
Critics say it is partly their own fault: The military continues to support the “good Taliban” — selected militant groups that share its strategic goals in India and Afghanistan — while the political leadership is often reluctant to openly criticize the militants.
As the bodies piled up in Peshawar, some dared to wonder if this atrocity would be a turning point.
Imran Khan, the former cricket star whose P.T.I. party rules Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, has often been criticized for being sympathetic to the Taliban, refusing to criticize the group by name and continuing to advocate peace talks with the group over the current military offensive.
But on Tuesday, he openly condemned the Taliban, saying he had been shocked by the violence against students. “Fight with men, not innocent children,” he said.
In a Peshawar hospital, meanwhile, staff laid out a row of children’s bodies as armed guards stood over a pile of small wooden coffins.