In June 2014, after an attack on Karachi’s worldwide airport killed more than two-dozen people, the Pakistani military launched a major operation to drive Islamist militants from their safe-havens in northwestern Pakistan’s tribal belt.
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A senior security official said the faces of the attackers were recognisable and their fingerprints had been taken, adding: “We hope we will soon identify them”.
Gunfire was exchanged between police, the army, and the attackers, killing at least four gunmen.
Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said his chemistry lecturer Syed Hamid Hussain warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired.
Television footage showed a heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing.
“I strongly condemn today’s appalling attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda”.
KP minister assured that the forces are holding anti-terrorist operations in the province to ensure the law and order situation however, the main issue is to stop the militants from destroying peace of the region.
A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The heavily armed terrorists scaled one of the boundary walls from the backside of the university with an aim to carry out an attack like the one on Army Public School, Peshawar.
Despite the conflicting statements from the Pakistan Taliban over responsibility, analysts say the attack probably is the work of the terror group.
Authorities would later blame the carnage that left 20 people, including students, dead on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is at war with the Pakistani state.
Four gunmen entered Bacha Khan University, opening fire on students and faculty, before they died in a firefight with police and military personnel.
(AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad). Pakistani troops clear way for an ambulance transporting a lifeless body of a victim from Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 201…
Pakistan’s Jinnah Institute stated in a report released yesterday that, the National Action Plan (NAP) helped curb extremist violence past year, although targeted attacks against religious minorities spiked in the Muslim nation of some 200 million people. A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle struck a crowded police checkpoint on the outskirts of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing 11 people in an attack that was also claimed by the Taliban.
“Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began”, Khan said.
Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
Naik Mohammed, security chief at the university, said the attackers had entered close to a campus guest house. Dawn News tweeted that at least three to four security guards are injured, an eye-witness who managed to come out of the premises said.
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Security and analysts, however, have repeatedly stressed that the Pakistani Taliban was still capable of pulling off headline-grabbing attacks, especially in the northwestern part of the country.
