Pakistani Taliban Attack on Peshawar School Leaves 145 Dead

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed into a military-run school in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing scores of teachers and schoolchildren and fighting an eight-hour gun battle with the security forces, officials said.

At least 145 people were dead by the time the last of the nine attackers was killed, government officials and medical workers said.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban confirmed that his group was responsible for the attack and said it was in retaliation for the military’s offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal district.

The militants’ assault started at about 10 a.m., when nine gunmen disguised as paramilitary soldiers climbed the rear wall of the Army Public School and Degree College, a school of about 2,500 pupils, including boys and girls, a senior security official said.

The attackers stormed through the school, lobbing hand grenades and indiscriminately shooting. In a chilling echo of the Beslan school siege in Russia in 2004, some of the worst violence occurred in the school’s main auditorium, where an army instructor had been giving children first aid lessons, officials and students said.

We were in the education hall when militants barged in, shooting,” said Zeeshan, a student, speaking at a hospital. “Our instructor asked us to duck and lay down and then I saw militants walking past rows of students shooting them in the head.”

Mushtaq Ghani, the information minister for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, confirmed that most of the victims had been killed by gunshots to the head.

As Pakistani security forces responded, some of the attackers blew themselves up while others were killed by members of the army’s Special Service Group commando unit.

Desperate parents, meanwhile, rushed to local hospitals or gathered outside the school gates seeking news of their children. One of them, Muhammad Arshad, described his relief after his son Ehsan was rescued army commandos.

“I am thankful to God for giving him a second life,” he said.

But at the Combined Military Hospital, the bodies of schoolchildren were lined up on the floor, most of them with single gunshot wounds to the head.

A 7-year-old student, Afaq, said militants had entered his classroom and immediately started shooting. “They killed our teacher,” he said, breaking down in tears.

“These attackers were not in the mood to take hostages,” a security official said. “They were there to kill and this is what they did.”