Unidentified gunmen entered Bacha Khan University in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Charsadda town and opened fire on students and faculty members as they gathered at the school for a poetry recital to commemorate the death anniversary of the activist and leader whom the school is named after.
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In the wake of the attack, Pakistan on Friday chose to form a high-level committee to investigate security arrangements made on the day of the deadly terror attack on Bacha Khan University.
Security forces killed all four gunmen during the assault, and said they hoped to identify them “soon”.
Students and teachers died in the attack, which triggered a gunbattle that lasted for about six hours.
On the same day, Umar Mansoor, commander of a Taliban faction, claimed that it was his fighters who launched the attacks, citing the university’s aid in preparing students to join the army and government as the reason.
The assault resembled a December 2014 assault at a Peshawar school in which more than 150 people were killed, mostly children.
Flags will fly at half mast on all government buildings inside as well as outside the united states, the office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said, while a prayer service will likely be held in the capital Islamabad.
A breakaway faction of the Taliban took responsibility for the university attack, although a spokesman for the larger Taliban organization, led by Mullah Fazlullah, denied having anything to do with it and called it “un-Islamic”.
Their relatives held a candlelight vigil in Peshawar late Wednesday for those slain in the latest attack. The attack also had an unmistakable political dimension for its targeting of peaceful political elements inside ethnic Pashtun society.
Attacks on education facilities were an early marker of the Taleban’s extremist ideology and ruthless methods.
Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif has said that the terrorist attack was coordinated and managed from across the border in Afghanistan.
According to a report published in 2014 by Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), education institutions in at least 70 countries were attacked between 2009 and 2013, while isolated attacks were reported in 40 countries.
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“I want to tell the terrorists, they can never win, they will lose, we will win, we the followers of peace and not terrorism”, Shah Hussain, father of the caretaker Fakhr-e-Alam, said.
