The Pakistani army said on Saturday the four gunmen who attacked a university in northwest Pakistan were trained in Afghanistan and the assault was controlled by a Pakistani Taliban militant from a location inside Afghanistan.
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The perpetrators of the Bacha Khan University in Pakistan were in contact with their handlers through a number from Afghanistan during the attack that killed 21 people, Director-General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Asim Saleem Bajwa said.
Defiant authorities kept schools open in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Thursday – the area where the university is located.
The police said rumours of an attack at the Tandl-ianwala girls’ high school in Faisalabad had spread swiftly, sending teachers and students racing for safety.
The International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS) at the University of Karachi also organised recitation of the Holy Quran for the martyrs of the Bacha Khan University.
Although Mansoor’s group quickly took responsibility for the university attack, a spokesman for the larger Taliban organisation, led by Mullah Fazlullah, denied having anything to do with it and called it ‘un-Islamic’.
He said that Pakistan army chief Gen Raheel Sharif has exchanged intelligence-based information with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
Most of the victims were buried quickly, according to Muslim tradition, with funerals overnight and early on Thursday, said police.
The decision was taken during an extraordinary meeting of the Apex Committee held here under the chairmanship of Governor Mehtab Abbasi at the Governor’s House in the wake of Bacha Khan University attack.
Umar Mansoor, a faction commander, also released video footage on Friday of four fighters he said carried out the attack, in a declaration that raised fresh questions of a possible split in the fractured Pakistani Taliban (TTP) leadership. Experts have repeatedly said that there could be no peace in Pakistan and the region unless war on terror is won in Afghanistan. Almost 20 were also injured in the attack.
Following the 2014 Peshawar attack, teachers in Pakistan were given permission to carry arms to work.
Some analysts say the divisions now in the Taliban over Wednesday’s attack probably have more to do with a fear of retribution than a reflection of a deeply fractured and split militant movement.
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Mansoor vowed to disrupt the system and its foundation that has come from Britain and America and is human made, emphasizing on the establishment of Allah’s system and rule.
