“The death toll in the terrorist attack has risen to 21”, regional police chief Saeed Wazir said without specifying if that included the four militants the army stated it had killed.
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A Pakistani official says the army and police have finished their operation to clear Taliban gunmen following an attack on a university campus in the country’s northwest.
According to AFP, the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named.
A terrorist attack at Bacha Kahn University in Charsadda, Pakistan claims the lives of at least 20.
Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men. Pakistan’s Geo News reports security forces are on site and are now engaging the terrorists in a gunfight.
Two attackers were on the first floor and three on the ground floor, he said, and both were using automatic assault rifles. He said he locked himself inside a second-floor bathroom and then jumped out the window when he saw one of the attackers approaching.
On Tuesday, a suicide attack at a market on the city’s outskirts killed 10 people, in addition to the bomber. You can hear the gunshots, blasts, grenade blasts.
After security forces combed the campus block by block after the massacre, Mehmood Khan, provincial home minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said 19 civilians were killed, along with four terrorists.
In the statement, Sharif said, “Those who attacked innocent students and citizens have no religion and the government is committed to eliminate them”.
In the aftermath, troop transporters pulled up to the gates of the university and entered campus with heavily armed soldiers, video from the scene showed. “The countless sacrifices made by our countrymen will not go in vain”, the statement quoted the Prime Minister, who is now in Zurich, as saying.
The attack stirred grim echoes of the horrific 2014 Peshawar school attack that killed more than 150 people, mostly children, and shocked the nation.
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Pakistani TV stations were broadcasting footage showing heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. “I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and he said many people had been killed and injured”.
