A hospital security guard helps a student injured in the shootout at a school under attack by Taliban gunmen in Peshawar. - AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad
Pakistan militants killed 84 children after storming an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, one of the country’s worst terrorist attacks in years.
Three suspects have been killed and as many as five remain inside the building after they gained access by dressing up as paramilitary soldiers, Pervez Khattak, chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told reporters. Some 1,500 people are being held hostage, Feroze Shah, a police spokesman in Peshawar, said by phone from the site of the attack.
“The army has taken up positions all around the school and will be going on the offensive soon,” Shah said, adding that the dead are mostly high school students who died when one of the attackers blew himself up.
Television images showed armored vehicles rolling into the area near the school building as soldiers leaped out of vans. Mothers were shown running toward the gate of the school and crying inside the hospital.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif backed an army offensive earlier this year into the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan. Violence has killed more than 50,000 people in Pakistan since 2001 and complicated efforts to revive South Asia’s second-biggest economy.
About 400 students were rescued, Najeedullah Khan, a police official in the region, said by phone earlier.
Schools are frequent targets for Taliban militants, according to Rashid Ahmad Khan, a professor of international relations at the University of Sargodha in Punjab province.
“This is blowback from the militant side amid the ongoing army operation in North Waziristan,” Khan said by phone. “It’s a reaction. It’s a desperate attempt from the militants to embarrass the government.”
- Source: Bloomberg via Astro Awani
No comments:
Post a Comment