Pakistan´s largest private news channel, Geo TV has paid rich tribute to the martyrs of Army Public School Peshawar on the first anniversary of the massacre.
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Army Public Schools across the country were open for ceremonies marking the anniversary, even though a security official said they were “particularly under threat”.
World is observing first anniversary of Army Public School terrorist attack today. The operation was launched in June 2014, six months before a team of six or seven Taliban militants stormed the army-run school in Peshawar; the attackers all either blew themselves up or were shot and killed by the army. “We are all thinking that there will be another attack”.
The CM’s special assistant said prayers would be held in schools and colleges across the province, while the children would offer fateha in the morning assembly. Terming the Peshawar attack as a “defining moment”, Basit said the people of Pakistan would never let the sacrifices made by the young children go waste.
Two survivors of the massacre attended a sombre ceremony on Tuesday in the British city of Birmingham organised by Nobel price victor Malala Yousafzai who herself survived a 2012 Taliban attack.
The surviving students still face the trauma and horrific memories of the attack, but they are back in their classrooms.
Recalling that after the attack, the civil, military leadership sat together, the premier said, “It was then, that I said desperate times call for desperate measures”.
But critics warn that long-term steps are not being taken to eradicate the scourge of extremism in society.
She survived a 2012 Taliban attack, retribution for advocating education for girls. “We will triumph over it only if we fight together”, the Pakistan envoy was quoted as saying in a press release by the High Commission.
The recent hangings takes the number of execution to 310 in less than one year.
Several of the victims’ parents have complained about the lack of transparency in the case, demanding a full inquiry. “We want nothing, only justice”.
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Sharif said he hoped the day was “not very far when these terrorists will be eliminated forever and every corner of Pakistan will be a place of peace and prosperity”.
