“Our four suicide attackers carried out the attack on Bacha Khan University today”, Umar Mansoor, a commander in the TTP militant group told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location.
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The assault resembled a December 2014 assault at a Peshawar school in which more than 150 people were killed, mostly children.
Most of the victims were students and their families were inconsolable.
The United Arab Emirates has condemned the terrorist attack that targeted Bacha Khan University in the Pakistani city of Charsadda, killing and injuring a number of innocent civilians.
The attack was reminiscent of the deadly 2014 assault on the Army Public School in nearby Peshawar, which was also claimed by Mansoor’s faction.
Most of the victims were buried quickly, according to Muslim tradition, with funerals overnight and early Thursday, said Khan, the police official. Mansoor was also said to have masterminded that attack.
Wednesday’s violence yet again exposed the vulnerability of schools in Pakistan, where extremists have sought to prevent Western-style education, especially for girls.
Bacha Khan attack, the gruesome killing after Peshawar terror strikes in 2015 killed 20 and left 51 injured.
“These reprehensible attacks, against students and teachers in Pakistan and members of the media in Afghanistan, underscore the ongoing threat that terrorists pose to the region and to the peaceful and prosperous future we seek to build together”, said Ned Price, spokesperson of the National Security Council, the White House. “We should wait for completion of the investigations, before reaching any conclusion”, said Qazi Khalilullah during the weekly press briefing on Thursday. “Those people who used the name of the Taliban in the attack will be tried in sharia courts”.
“There are five dead bodies in front of me”, said emergency official Bilal Faizi, speaking from the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda.
Taleban faction leader calls schools, colleges and universities across Pakistan as foundations that produce apostates.. “I urge all people with peace in their hearts to renew their resolve to stand up to terrorism and ignorance, and work together to protect life and learning”. The protesters said they did not need condemnation statements routinely issued by the rulers, politicians and law enforcing institutions, but want an indiscriminate action against all the terrorists and anti-state elements. His students managed to get away as he single-handedly took on the militants during the assault Wednesday that killed 19 students and another professor and wounded 22.
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Marwat, the vice chancellor, said security forces alone could not keep students safe, saying it required a move away from an extreme interpretation of Islam. “They wore jackets like the forces do”.
