Since the 1970s, more people have died in attacks on schools in Pakistan than in any other country, according to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database.
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A breakaway Taliban faction claimed responsibility for the assault – the same faction, headed by Khalifa Umar Mansoor, which had claimed the Peshawar school assault.
The strike on the army school united Pakistanis, already scarred by a decade of assaults, in shock and outrage and prompted a government and military-led crackdown on extremism.
“Now we will not kill the soldier in his cantonment, the lawyer in the court or the politician in parliament but in the places where they are prepared, the schools, the universities, the colleges that lay their foundation”, a bearded Mansoor said in the video, holding an admonishing finger aloft.
Teachers on the university campus were allowed by administrators to carry firearms after an attack on a school in nearby Peshawar left 145 dead, majority children.
“My son was grown up, but still he was an innocent kid for me”, said Gula Bibi, the mother of the second killed teacher, Iftikhar Ahmad, who was the university librarian.
Lt-Gen Asim Bajwa also presented a map of Mardan and Charsadda showing the movement of the attackers. Troops later cornered the attackers inside two university blocks, killing all four of them, the Army said.
National and global media scrambled to get as much information as possible on the campus of Bacha Khan University Wednesday hours after security forces finished their operation and declared the campus clear, Charsadda, Pakistan.
Pakistani authorities reject the proscribed TTP central spokesperson Muhammad Khorasani denial that the TTP and Mullah Fazlullah had nothing to do with the attack.
Pakistani intelligence agencies had issued a security alert January 3, citing information that at least eight suicide bombers had entered the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Afghanistan and could try to target educational institutions.
Pakistan’s Army chief General Raheel Sharif called Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Commander Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan General John Campbell to share details of Pakistani investigations.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed a “ruthless” response to the massacre and ordered security forces to hunt those behind the attack.
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A Pakistani army helicopter lands in Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016.
