Pakistan attack kills 132 kids

Taliban climb school’s wall, take 141 lives

Guards at a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, carry a student who was injured in an attack on his school by Taliban gunmen. “My son was in uniform in the morning. He is in a casket now,” one parent wailed.
Guards at a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, carry a student who was injured in an attack on his school by Taliban gunmen. “My son was in uniform in the morning. He is in a casket now,” one parent wailed.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing at least 141 people, mostly children, before government troops ended the attack.

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AP

Parents escort their children Tuesday outside a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, where Taliban gunmen attacked earlier, killing at least 141 people, most of them children.

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AP

Injured student Mohammad Baqair is comforted by his uncle and cousin Tuesday as he cries over the death of a teacher killed by Taliban attackers.

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AP

A man hugs a student Tuesday at the bedside of another student who was injured in Tuesday’s Taliban attack on a school in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

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AP

A Pakistani soldier takes position Tuesday on a bunker during the Taliban attack on a military-run school.

The overwhelming majority of the victims were students at the school, which instructs grades one through 10. As darkness fell on the area, officials said they had cleared the school of militants.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the assault and rushed to Peshawar to show his support for the victims. He described the attack as a "national tragedy unleashed by savages" and declared three days of national mourning for the victims.

"These were my children. This is my loss. This is the nation's loss," he said.

A Pakistani military spokesman, Asim Bajwa, said 141 people died in the attack -- 132 children and nine staff members. An additional 121 students and three staff members were wounded.

Bajwa said seven attackers died in the assault. All were wearing explosives vests, but it was not immediately clear whether the militants were killed by the soldiers or blew themselves up, he said.

The attack was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban. Bajwa described an assault that seemed designed purely to kill rather than take anyone hostage to further the militant group's aims.

"Their sole purpose, it seems, was to kill those innocent kids. That's what they did," Bajwa said.

"These people were not humans; they were monsters," he said.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, as the group is formally known, is a loose network of local militant groups who want to overthrow the country's government in a bid to install their own harsh brand of Islamic law. They have killed thousands of civilians and security forces in their decade-old campaign of deadly bombings, shootings and other attacks.

In a statement to reporters later Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani said the attack was retribution for the military's operation against militants in nearby North Waziristan, the northwestern tribal region where the group's fighters largely have been based.

The military has said about 1,700 militants have been killed since the launch of the operation, which was billed as the final chapter in a five-year counterinsurgency campaign that has claimed the lives of more than 60,000 Pakistanis.

"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.

Taliban fighters previously had vowed a wave of violence in response to the operation, but until Tuesday, there had been only one major attack, by a splinter group near the Pakistan-India border in November.

The prime minister vowed that the country would not be cowed by the violence and that the military would continue with its operation against the militants, which began in June.

"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."

He announced an emergency meeting of all political parties in the city for today.

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.

"These terrorists are enemies of Pakistan, enemies of Islam and enemies of humanity," the statement said.

Even Taliban militants in neighboring Afghanistan decried the killing rampage, calling it "un-Islamic."

Military connection

The rampage at the Army Public School and College began in the morning when seven militants scaled a back wall using a ladder, Bajwa said.

The first students targeted were ninth- and 10th-graders gathered in the auditorium to receive first-aid training from military doctors, police said.

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 Mehran, who survived by playing dead.

Muhammad Harris, a 16-year-old student, said he was in a room with 30 students and four teachers when they heard a commotion in the hallway. The students said some of the attackers appeared to be speaking Arabic.

"One attacker was crying, 'Help me, I am injured,'" Harris said. "But he was not and was trying to trap us and shoot us."

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 as terrified parents searched for their children.

By evening, funeral services were already being held for many of the victims as clerics announced the deaths over mosque loudspeakers.

"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."

At the Lady Reading Hospital, 16-year-old Shahrukh Khan said he hid behind a desk as four gunmen entered the auditorium. He watched the gunmen calmly shoot anyone they could find. Then, from behind the desk, he saw two black boots approaching him, he told the AFP news agency.

Bullets then tore into both his legs below his knee.

"I will never forget the black boots approaching me," he said. "I felt as though it was death that was approaching me."

A little more than 1,000 students and staff members were registered at the school, which is part of a network run by the military, although the surrounding area is not heavily fortified. The student body is made up of both children of military personnel as well as civilians.

Most of the students appeared to be civilians rather than children of the army staff, said Javed Khan, a government official. Analysts said the militants likely targeted the school because of its military connections.

"It's a kind of a message that we can also kill your children," Pakistani analyst Zahid Hussain said.

Peshawar has been the target of frequent militant attacks in the past but has seen a relative lull recently.

Hussain called the attack an "act of desperation."

The violence will throw public support behind the campaign in North Waziristan, he said. It also shows that the Pakistani Taliban still maintains a strong intelligence network and remains a threat.

The attack drew swift condemnation from around the world.

President Obama promised to stand by Pakistan -- a key ally in the region -- after an attack he described as "horrific."

"By targeting students and teachers in this heinous attack, terrorists have once again shown their depravity," said Obama.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry added: "The images are absolutely gut-wrenching: young children carried away in ambulances, a teacher burned alive in front of the students, a house of learning turned into a house of unspeakable horror."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Pakistan's longtime regional rival, called it "a senseless act of unspeakable brutality."

"My heart goes out to everyone who lost their loved ones today. We share their pain & offer our deepest condolences," Modi said in a series of Twitter statements.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was a "an act of horror and rank cowardice to attack defenseless children while they learn."

The violence recalled the attack on Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman outside her school in the Swat Valley for speaking out about girls' rights. She survived to become a global advocate for girls' education and received the Nobel Peace Prize last week but has not returned to Pakistan in the two years since the shooting out of security concerns.

"Innocent children in their school have no place in horror such as this," the 17-year-old said Tuesday.

"I am heartbroken," she said. "But we will never be defeated."

Information for this article was contributed by Riaz Khan, Asif Shahzad, Rebecca Santana, Munr Ahmed, Ishtiaq Mahsud, Dera Ismail Khan and Danica Kirka of The Associated Press; by Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, Salman Masood, Ismail Khan and Declan Walsh of The New York Times; by Tim Craig, Aimir Iqbal, Haq Nawaz Khan, Shaiq Hussain, Brian Murphy and Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post; by Tom Hussain of Tribune News Service; and by Faseeh Mangi, Kamran Haider, Khurrum Anis, Naween A. Mangi, Sangwon Yoon, Nicole Gaouette and Dick Schumacher of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 12/17/2014

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