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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Umar Mansoor, chief of one of the Pakistani Taliban factions, has claimed responsibility for the university attack.
Pakistan’s northwest and its lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan is a highly volatile region. The attackers were later contained inside two blocks where troops killed the four attackers.
Police say the four attackers entered the university in Charsadda at around nine in the morning and began shooting students and teachers. Most of the victims were shot dead at a hostel for male students.
A Pakistani army spokesman said four militants were shot and killed by army soldiers at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, east of the city of Peshawar.
One of the wounded students, a geology major, died overnight and his funeral was also being held Thursday. He left a message behind for us before dying. “Some people hid in bathrooms”.
Dozens of personnel in combat fatigues and automatic weapons piled out of transport vehicles as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances with sirens wailing approached the scene.
“Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif is deeply grieved over the sad incident of terrorists’ attack on Bacha Khan University, Charsada, which has reportedly resulted into the loss of precious human lives and injured many others”, a statement from the Prime Minister’s office read.
The university teaches more than 3,000 students and was hosting an extra 600 visitors on Wednesday for a poetry recital, according to its vice chancellor Fazal Rahim. Yesterday’s attack came a little over a year after Taliban militants massacred over 150 people, mostly students, in an assault on an army-run school in Peshawar in December, 2014.
He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army.
But an official spokesperson for the Pakistani Taliban denied involvement, labelling the attack “un-Islamic”. This followed the huge military operations in North Waziristan Operation Zarb-i-Azb that is reported to have cleared the “terror groups” from the area but with huge casualties on all sides.
Security improved in 2015, which saw the fewest deaths from militant violence since the formation of the Pakistani Taleban in 2007 – but critics have repeatedly warned the government is not taking long-term steps to tackle the underlying scourge of extremism. Taliban gunmen stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing…
“The attackers were in touch with a number from Afghanistan”, Lt-Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa, director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), told a news briefing in Peshawar.
“There was a thick fog and I heard gunfire”, said Zakir Ali, a student who suffered a bullet injury.
“I don’t blame them, why wouldn’t they carry guns if attacks like these happen every now and then?”
Raza Ahmad Rumi Hamid tweeted: “Martyr of education, Prof Hamid who was killed by terrorists in Bacha Khan University”.
Meanwhile, Mohammad Ayaz, a victim of BKU attack, succumbed to his injured in Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital (LRH).
The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar.
Since the start of the new year, Pakistan has been battered by five militant attacks, majority targeting security forces.
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“We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland”. As a special offer, you can get 40 issues of Charisma magazine for only ! “We have some security staff, but they were not enough to face the Taliban”, she said.
