The PML-N leader said that Pakistan was a nuclear power having a population of over 180 million people and so the elements that were trying to destroy the country needed to be defeated.
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“I extend my thoughts and good wishes to the family, friends and loved ones of all the victims”, he said.
Parents also protested at a later ceremony organised by the provincial government, demanding an inquiry as Imran Khan tried to speak. “No grievance excuses the horror and cowardice of attacking defenceless children while they learn”, the UN Chief said in a message released by his office. “I only want an answer to my question…”
Frontier Corps Balochistan organized graceful functions across the province to pay homage to martyrs of Army Public School Peshawar.
They asked why their children were brutally assassinated; why the judicial commission to probe the massacre had not been made, and why the responsibility for security failure was not being fixed even after a lapse of one year.
“They can’t stop the tears of my wife”, said Jamal Abdul Nasir, breaking down into tears himself as he remembered his son Awais. Besides a large number of parents, PTI chief Imran Khan, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, Speaker Provincial Assembly Asad Qaiser and others were also present on this occasion.
Fazal Khan, the father of a martyred APS student, said that they didn’t need money, plots of land or other compensation in return for the blood of their children.
Addressing ceremony at APS Peshawar, PM says Zarb-e-Azb has broken back of terrorists.
Waving his cellphone from the stage, he claimed he had a video recording in the phone of the IGP’s statement in which he confessed the security failure at the APS.
A day after the Peshawar school attack, as the nation mourned, Pakistan’s united political leadership announced that it would no longer be willing to make any distinction between “good” and “bad” terrorists – a differentiation that had invited scathing criticism when enunciated by Islamabad.
However, the parents of those children who fell victim to the APS terror attack are still protesting, arguing that the federal as well as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government have not acted as per their demands.
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Pakistan has arrested almost 100,000 people under a counter-terrorism programme enacted after a massacre of school children a year ago, though only about 2,000 of them were militants, a senior Interior Ministry official said. Finance Minister Ayesha Ghaus Pasha was the chief guest.
