TIMES OF INDIA..CHENNAI

Dec 17 2014 : The Times of India (Chennai)

Pak Taliban's depraved revenge leaves 145 dead, 132 of them schoolchildren

Omer Farooq Khan

Peshawar: TNN





Army School Hit, Terror Group Says Only Older Kids Targeted

Picking the softest of soft targets, the Pakistani Taliban on Tuesday launched a savage and cowardly attack on a school, essentially for children of military families, spraying machine-gun fire on kids behind desks, leaving 132 of them dead. By the time the nine-hour siege ended, 145 people, including the terrorists, were killed and 121 others injured. It was the worst attack on children anywhere in the world since the Beslan mass killing by Chechen Islamist rebels in 2004.

Addressing a press conference in Peshawar after conclusion of the rescue operation, military spokesman Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa said the Tehrik-e-Taliban attack on the Army Public School and Degree College was carried out by seven terrorists wearing suicide jackets.

He said the attackers planned to stay for long. “The ration and ammunition which they brought along was sufficient for several days,“ Major General Bajwa said.

At the time of the attack, he said, around 1,100 students and staff were in the school.The Special Services Group (SSG), which carried out the operation, rescued about 960 students and their teachers. The dead included the school's woman principal Tahira Qazi. Another woman teacher was burnt to death.

Claiming responsibility , Taliban spokesman Muham mad Umar Khorasani said, “We selected the army school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and women. We want them to feel the pain.“ He said they had issued instructions not to harm small children. The Pakistani Taliban terrorists who attacked the Army Public School and Degree College here on Tuesday had planted improvised explosive devices on the premises making rescue operations difficult and leading to a nearly day-long gunbattle.

Dressed in uniforms of paramilitary force, the attackers entered the school premises on Warsak Road around 10am. A security official said many of the casualties were caused by suicide blasts. Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani said, “We took this extreme step as revenge. We will target every institution linked to the army unless they stop operations and the extra-judicial killing of our detainees.“ “We have instructed our men not to harm small children even if they are the sons of senior military or civilian leaders,“ he claimed.

“When the firing started, students ran to their classrooms. The militants were entering every class and killing children,“ Mudassir Awan, a worker at the school, said. Aamir Ali, a second-year student who survived the attack, said, “I was sitting with my classmates in the corridor when firing began. We rushed to the classroom but were soon chased by two clean-shaven gunmen, dressed in uniforms of Frontier Constabulary , a paramilitary force. They told us to read `kalima' and then started firing indiscriminately. All my classmates were killed but I survived.“

Waqarullah Khattak, a teacher, said he told students to lie down on the floor when they heard gunshots. “There was blood everywhere, limbs and pieces of children's flesh could be seen where the bombers blew themselves up,“ a security official said. “They were keen on killing as many students as possible.“