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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Haroon Siddique in London and Alan Yuhas in New York

Pakistan Taliban school attack kills 141, including 132 children - as it happened

An eyewitness describes the horror of the attack on a school in Peshawar

Summary

We’re going to wrap our live coverage of the attack in Pakistan with a summary; you can also read a wrap of the attack and military counterstrike by Jon Boone and Ewan MacAskill here.

  • The Pakistani Taliban killed 141 people, including 132 children, in an attack on an army run school in Peshawar, a city in the country’s north-west. The attack was the deadliest in Pakistan’s history.
  • Pakistani special forces mounted a rescue operation and battled the militants in the school, ending the siege and clearing the building of explosives. The army said there were seven terrorists, all wearing suicide jackets, and that the militants sought no demands but only to kill students.
  • Prime minister Nawaz Sharif travelled to Peshawar and the army launched at least 10 air strikes on the Taliban. Sharif called the attack a national tragedy and promised to eradicate the terrorists. “These are my children and it is my loss,” he said. He announced three days of national mourning.
  • Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan said it attacked the army-run school in retaliation for a government offensive in the north: “This is a reaction to the killing of our children and dumping of bodies of our mujahideen,” a spokesman said.
  • Leaders around the world, from Indian prime minister Narendra to US president Barack Obama, condemned the attack in the strongers terms. Pakistani Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who also survived a Taliban attack, said she was “heartbroken by this senseless and cold-blooded act of terror”.

Updated

In the face of horror like that witnessed in Peshawar today, Pakistanis and Indians are rallying for rapprochement, solidarity and a common cause for mourning.

Leaders have joined in, including chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah.

Several children who survived have told wrenching, horrific stories to Reuters. Some describe the militants as speaking either Arabic or Farsi, others describe lying among their peers as the gunmen swept through rooms, and still more evince the untold scars that the experience has left them with.

One student, Jalal Ahmed, 15, could hardly speak, choking with tears: “I am a biochemistry student and I was attending a lecture in our main hall. After some time we heard someone kicking the back doors. Then the men came with big guns.”

Ahmed started to cry. Standing next to his bed, his father, Mushtaq Ahmed, said: “He keeps screaming: ‘take me home, take me home, they will come back and kill me.’”

One nine-year-old boy, who asked not to be named because he was too afraid to be identified, said teachers shepherded his class out through a back door as soon as the shooting began.

“The teacher asked us to recite from the Koran quietly,” he said. “When we came out from the back door there was a crowd of parents who were crying. When I saw my father he was also crying.”

World leaders have condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms, from UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, who said TTP “bears no resemblance to any religion or any cultural norm, to US secretary of state John Kerry, who declared the children killed “the world’s loss”.

Updated

The army is still clearing explosive devices left at the school, per Pakistan’s Home Department.

“Schools have long been in the Taliban’s crosshairs,” the Guardian’s south Asia correspondent Jason Burke writes, in an analysis of the Peshawar attack.

More than a thousand have been destroyed by Islamist militants from one faction or another in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the past five years. The institutions both symbolise government authority and are seen as un-Islamic. This school is at the edge of a military “cantonment” in Peshawar, the capital of the province, and inevitably many students are the children of servicemen.

The attack reinforces the impression of a civilian and military leadership simply unable to ensure the security of Pakistan’s 180-million-plus citizens and will further raise growing concerns about the security environment across south Asia. This is of course, at least in part, the aim of the militants.

Pakistani army personnel.
Pakistani army personnel. Photograph: Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty Images

The backdrop is the continuing power struggle in Pakistan between the army generals and the elected if imperfect civilian government. On Tuesday Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, and Raheel Sharif, the army chief, both flew to Peshawar. They did not travel together. Both said they wanted to oversee operations in person.

Jason goes on to describe how one of the main concerns in the US and elsewhere is Pakistan’s “selective” attitude to Islamist militants, and mutual suspicion reigns among officials in Kabul, Delhi, Islamabad and Washington.

Caught in the crossfire in the middle of this maelstrom of violence and politics are the children.

Buzzfeed’s Sheera Frenkel also writes that more than 1,000 schools in Pakistan have been targeted for terrorist attacks since 2009, quoting human rights groups . You can read Jason’s full dispatch here.

Updated

Army spokesman Asim Bajwa reiterates that the Taliban made no demands: “they started killing children as soon as they entered the school.”

Bajwa says that Pakistan’s army will “resolutely identify all sympathizers and facilitators of the terrorists, and will hunt them down finish them all until they are killed.”

Pakistan’s army chief, General Raheel Sharif, says “terrorists have attacked the heart of our country.”

Updated

The press conference with the army spokesman continues: “The terrorists had a stock of weapons and food. They had plans to maintain the siege for a long time.”

“They did not come with the intention to take hostages. Their purpose was to kill children.”

Updated

Pakistan army: 141 killed

Pakistan’s Major General Asim Bajwa has told reporters that 132 children and nine staff members died today, increasing the civilian death toll at 141.

He says there were seven militants, all wearing suicide jackets, and that several special forces soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

“The terrorists used a ladder to cross the school walls from the graveyard behind the school. The terrorists and the Pakistani army fought in the administrative block of the school.”

He says 960 students and staff were saved in the rescue operation, and that 121 children were wounded during the attack.

The death toll has now surpassed the previous worst terrorist attack in Pakistan’s history, the attack in Karachi in 2007, making the Peshawar raid the deadliest in the nation’s history.

Updated

Imran Khan, a political opponent of prime minister Sharif and a former cricket star, says today’s attack is the most horrific act he’s ever seen. He calls for unity against terrorism.

US secretary of state John Kerry says “wherever you live, wherever you are, those are our children and this is the world’s loss.”

john kerry
John Kerry. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Speaking in London, he continued: this “absolutely gut wrenching” attack turned “a house of learning … into a house of unspeakable horror”.

“The news of the brazen murder of more than 120 innocent students in Peshawar is devastating. This act of terror angers and shakes all people of conscience and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms. The perpetrators must be brought to justice.”

“A motley collection of local extremist outfits” under pressure in recent months by a Pakistani offensive and riven by internal factions, the TTP has grown more extreme and violent as its circumstances grown more dire, my colleague Jason Burke reports.

The most important, made up of members of the powerful Mehsud tribe, has simply gone it alone. Others have rejected the brutal violence that has long been a hallmark of the movement. Mohammed Khurasani, the spokesman who claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, has been in the job for only a few weeks. The previous incumbent left to join a breakaway group loyal to Islamic State.

Security officials and experts know that when groups fragment, and leadership is contested, attacks often become more extreme as individual commanders and their followers seek to prove themselves the most effective, and the most audacious.

Extreme violence, even directed at targets such as schools, also serves to reinforce disintegrating authority over communities in the enclaves where the militants are based.

Since June, a new and very direct pressure has been applied on the TTP. The Pakistani military finally moved into the North Waziristan tribal agency, where dozens of groups threatening local, regional and international targets were based.

More than a thousand fighters from the movement are thought to have been killed, and civilians too. The TTP, which has established a presence in most urban centres, reacted by bringing the war into the heart of Pakistan with a strike on the main international airport in Karachi, the southern port city which is the country’s commercial capital, and a huge bombing of a flag ceremony, claimed by a splinter group, on the western border with India.

This latest attack is 20 miles short of the eastern border. Are the Taliban set on demonstrating an ability to strike throughout the country? Possibly. Or they may simply be seeking high-profile targets of opportunity. Khurasani, the spokesman, only said that Tuesday’s attack was in revenge for children killed by the army offensive.

You can read Jason’s full dispatch here.

A candle light vigil in Islamabad, for the victims of the school attack in Pesharwar
A candle light vigil in Islamabad, for the victims of the school attack in Pesharwar Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP

Other Islamic militant groups have condemned the Taliban’s Peshawar attack, the Wall Street Journal reports, including the leader of the group blamed for the 2008 attack in Mumbai.

“This was carried out by the enemies of Islam. It is open terrorism,” said Hafiz Saeed, the leader of Jamaat ud Dawa, the group blamed by the international community for the 2008 attack on Mumbai that left 166 people dead. “These are barbarians operating under the name of jihad.”

Part of the Pakistani Taliban is based in eastern Afghanistan, beyond the reach of the Pakistani army. Islamabad is seeking cooperation from US-led coalition force in Afghanistan and the Afghan army to act against the Pakistani Taliban sanctuaries in the Kunar and Nuristan provinces in the east of Afghanistan.

The Taliban has mounted a new offensive at the border with Afghanistan, Reuters reports, thought it qualifies that by noting there is not yet any clear relation to the Peshawar attack. You can read the Journal story here.

“I saw death so close. I will never forget the black boots approaching,” a teenage survivor shot twice recalls hearing to AFP, as horror stories emerge from the school. Be warned the following story is graphic.

“Someone screamed at us to get down and hide below the desks,” he said, adding that the gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar” [God is greatest] before opening fire.

“I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches.”

“There are so many children beneath the benches, go get them,” one of the men ordered another.

Khan said he felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs just below the knee.

He decided to play dead, adding: “I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream.

“The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again.

“My body was shivering. I saw death so close. I will never forget the black boots approaching me – I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.”

Khan told AFP he waited until the men left, then realized he couldn’t stand and crawled to the next room, where he saw the burned body of the school office assistant. He crawled behind a door to hid and lost consciousness, awaking in the hospital with his father.

Eerie scenes of the high alert around the school and the deep mourning that has begun in Pakistan.

Pakistani soldiers stand guard near the site of the attack.
Soldiers stand guard near the site of the attack. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty
Pakistani soldiers take position as others sweep the school.
Pakistani soldiers take position as others sweep the school. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty
Schoolgirls pray for victims. pakistan
Schoolgirls pray for victims. Photograph: Nadeem Khawer/EPA
A man lights candles to mourn the victims. pakistan
A man lights candles to mourn the victims. Photograph: Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

“The operation is complete,” a military source has told Reuters, though forces continue to sweep the area.

Prime minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed “the fight will continue,” and AP has spoken with several students and their relatives.

“My son was in uniform in the morning. He is in a casket now,” wailed one parent, Tahir Ali, as he came to the hospital to collect the body of his 14-year-old son Abdullah. “My son was my dream. My dream has been killed.”

One of the wounded students, Abdullah Jamal, said that he was with a group of 8th, 9th and 10th graders who were getting first-aid instructions and training with a team of Pakistani army medics when the violence began for real.

Jamal described a scene of panic and terror, “I saw children falling down crying and screaming. I also fell down. I learned later that I got shot.”

Pakistani students near the site of the attack.
Pakistani students near the site of the attack. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

President Barack Obama has condemned the “heinous” attack in a statement from the White House.

The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today’s horrific attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan. Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims, their families and loved ones. By targeting students and teachers in this heinous attack, terrorists have once again shown their depravity.

We stand with the people of Pakistan, and reiterate the commitment of the United States to support the government of Pakistan in its efforts to combat terrorism and extremism and to promote peace and stability in the region.

Updated

Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has arrived in Peshawar and is being briefed by army chiefs.

Updated

Explosive devices planted around the school continue to threaten staff, students and the special forces trying to rescue them and clear the school, AFP reports.

“The combat operation is over, the security personnel are carrying out clearance operation and hopefully they will clear the building in a while,” police official Abdullah Khan told AFP.

“Dead bodies of six terrorists have been found in the building.”

Senior police official Shafqat Malik confirmed the combat phase of the response was over, while chief army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said on Twitter that the operation was “closing up”.

Bajwa said explosive devices planted in school buildings by the militants were slowing clearance efforts.

Updated

Air strikes against the Taliban have already begun, according to Pakistan’s Home Department.

Updated

More victims have succumbed to injuries, increasing the death toll to at least 131 people, mostly children, according to Pakistan’s Home Department.

Summary

  • The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) have killed at least 126 people, mostly children, in an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, in the north-west of the country, officials say. Many more were injured and it seems likely that the death toll will rise.
  • The Pakistani police say the siege, one of the worst attacks to have hit the country in years, has ended. The army said it had killed six terrorists and rescued several hostages, among them children and teachers.
  • The Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, travelled to Peshawar. He called the attack a national tragedy and promised to eradicate terrorism. “These are my children and it is my loss,” he said. He announced three days of national mourning.
  • Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan said it attacked the army-run school “because the government is targeting our families and females”. An army offensive in the region has targeted the militant group.
  • There was widespread international condemnation of the attack including from David Cameron, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the education campaigner and Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai. She said she was “heartbroken by this senseless and cold-blooded act of terror”.

Updated

The Pakistani army has announced 10 air strikes in the region of the school attacked by the Taliban today.

‘Attack all over, all militants dead’ police say

Updated

The president of neighbouring Afghanistan, which has seen plenty of blood shed by the Taliban on its soil, joins the condemnation:

Richard Olson, the US ambassador to Pakistan has described the Peshawar attack as “heinous”. A statement issued by the US embassy says:

On behalf of the American people, US ambassador Richard Olson extends the deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims of Tuesday’s heinous attack on the army public school in Peshawar. The United States strongly condemns senseless and inhumane attacks on innocent students and educators, and stands in solidarity with the people of Pakistan, and all who fight the menace of terrorism. Few have suffered more at the hands of terrorists and extremists than the people of Pakistan. That is why it remains essential for the United States and Pakistan to continue to work together to secure peace and stability in the region.

Imran Khan, the chief and founder of the PTI party, has, like his political rival Nawaz Sharif, reportedly arrived in Peshawar.

The former Pakistan cricket captain, who was a hero during his sporting career, is a controversial figure due to his insistence that the Pakistani government should negotiate with the Taliban.

He has condemned today’s attack and has called off nationwide protests against the incumbent government planned for Thursday but there has been some criticism of his stance towards the Taliban in the wake of the barbaric attack.

Updated

Army operation ‘closing up’

Updated

The education campaigner and Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban, has condemned the “atrocious and cowardly” attack on a school in Pakistan. She said:

I am heartbroken by this senseless and cold-blooded act of terror in Peshawar that is unfolding before us.

Innocent children in their school have no place in horror such as this. I condemn these atrocious and cowardly acts and stand united with the government and armed forces of Pakistan whose efforts so far to address this horrific event are commendable.

I, along with millions of others around the world, mourn these children, my brothers and sisters – but we will never be defeated.

Updated

The government has declared three days of national mourning in response to the attack and the prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, has called for an all-party conference in Peshawar tomorrow.

Updated

Gordon Brown, the United Nations special envoy for global education, has joined the condemnation of the attack. He said:

The whole world will be shocked and heartbroken at the massacre in Peshawar that has destroyed so many innocent young lives.

Prime Minister Sharif has called the attack a national tragedy and our thoughts are with families and school friends. Our hope is that emergency assistance can come immediately to those who are injured. We must remain resolute in saying that no terrorist group can at any time ever justify denying children the right to an education and we will do everything in our power to support the Pakistan authorities and make sure their schools are safe and protected.

It has never been acceptable for schools to be places of conflict and for children to be subject to violence simply because they want to learn. Education is opportunity and hope for building nations.

Too often innocent girls and boys have become targets for terrorists who want to deny children the right to education and schools have become theatres of war.

No one has the right to deny a boy or girl their education and we will stand alongside the parents and the children against the Taliban‘s refusal to recognise every child has the right to education.

Here are two Guardian maps showing the location of the school in north-west Pakistan.

Updated

Express Tribune journalists have been providing updates from the Lady Reading hospital, where some of the dead and injured have been sent.

Updated

Many have taken to social media to express their revulsion at the massacre.

In Jon Boone’s latest update he says the Taliban are claiming to have told operatives “not to kill minor children”.

TTP spokesman Mohammad Khorasani has been making calls to local media. According to one journalist he said: “This is a reaction to the killing of our children and dumping of bodies of our mujahideen in various parts of the country. Around six suicide bombers entered the school and we are in contact with them. We have asked them not to kill minor children.

If there were six attackers, then there is only one alive if the Pakistani army’s claim to have killed five terrorists is true.

Updated

Summary

  • 126 people have been killed and many more injured in an attack by the Pakistani Taliban on an army-run school in Peshawar, a regional official says.
  • The Pakistani army said it had killed five terrorists and was searching for more. There are still believed to be hostages inside the school. A number of explosions have been heard from inside the building.
  • The Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has arrived in Peshawar. He called the attack a national tragedy. “These are my children and it is my loss,” he said.
  • Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban, said it attacked the army-run school “because the government is targeting our families and females”.

Updated

Five terrorists have been killed, the army says

Updated

A Pakistani soldier stands guard outside a hospital in Peshawar
A Pakistani soldier stands guard outside the hospital in Peshawar. Photograph: Xinhua News Agency/Rex

India’s prime minister has sent his condolences to his neighbours in Pakistan.

Here is another update from Jon Boone:

Ali Khan, a police official who works in the district where the school is located, said between eight and 10 terrorists wearing army uniforms were involved in the attack. They jumped into the compound from the roof of a tall van which they had parked near the school.

One of them blew himself up as soon as the guards came to capture them; the others started moving towards classes and the principal’s room.

This is an upper-middle-class area and most of the children belong to army families. One of our policemen, who was there, claimed around 200 children had been killed but it is not yet confirmed.

Updated

Asim Bajwa is the chief spokesman for the Pakistani army.

The Pakistani police say three explosions have been heard at the school, Reuters reports.

Recent reports suggested that three of the Taliban attackers are still alive inside the school as well as a number of hostages.

An eyewitness describes the horror of the attack on the school in this Guardian video.

The media interview a man who was rescued from the school.
The media interview a man who was rescued from the school. Photograph: Khuram Parvez/Reuters

A plainclothes security officer escorts students rescued away from the school.
A plain-clothes security officer escorts students away from the school. Photograph: Mohammad Sajjad/AP

Updated

Three days of mourning have been announced in the provinces of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Updated

'Death toll rises to 126'

The official account of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reports another rise in the death toll.

Updated

A police official in Peshawar told my colleague Jon Boone that 104 children had been killed and 100 injured. “Some of the injured are critical so the death toll could rise,” he said.

The provincial chief minister reportedly said 104 had been killed, including 84 children.

Updated

Here is a map of the area where the school is, created by @AsadHashim

Jon Boone, the Guardian’s Pakistan correspondent, has been speaking to to Waqar-Ullah Khattack, a 38-year-old Islamic teacher, who was in the school at the time of the attack. He said:

He was one of four invigilators supervising an examination of 61 students aged 14 to 16. In a city plagued by terror attacks he said staff had received training for such events. He and his colleagues immediately told the students to get down on the floor when they heard AK47 rounds and grenade blasts at 11am. After less than an hour they were led to safety by commandos, past the bodies of at least seven dead children.

“I have no words for this type of terrorism because we are all just too mentally upset,” he said.

Also, in a sign of the scale of the attack, the city’s Lady Reading hospital, an institution that has had to deal with the aftermath of many previous atrocities, is appealing for blood.

Updated

The Taliban attacked a military-run school on Tuesday because they wanted revenge for the Pakistani military targeting their own families, a spokesman for the militant group said, according to Reuters. Muhammad Umar Khorasani is quoted as saying:

We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females. We want them to feel the pain.

Peshawar is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the north-west province in Pakistan that borders Afghanistan. The Pakistani army has been carrying out an offensive against the Taliban in the region.

Updated

Ambulances drive away from the school
Ambulances drive away from the school. Photograph: Khuram Parvez/Reuters

Updated

A Pakistani army soldier takes position on a bunker close to the school.
A Pakistani army soldier takes position on a bunker close to the school Photograph: Mohammad Sajjad/AP

Updated

A hospital security guard helps a student injured in the shootout.
A hospital security guard helps a student injured in the shootout Photograph: Mohammad Sajjad/AP

Updated

A soldier escorts schoolchildren after they were rescued from from the Army Public School that is under attack
A soldier escorts schoolchildren after they were rescued from from the Army Public School Photograph: Khuram Parvez/Reuters

Updated

The Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, is heading for Peshawar and has called the massacre a national tragedy.

Updated

This is the brief English-language statement issued by the Pakistani army this morning:

Rescue operation by troops underway. Exchange of fire continues. Bulk of student and staff evacuated. Reports of some children and teachers killed by terrorist. More details to follow.

Pervez Khattak, Pakistan’s chief minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, says more than 100 people, including 84 children, have been killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar.

There were believed to be around 500 students and teachers present when five or six militants wearing military uniforms entered the school on Tuesday, in the Pakistani Taliban’s highest profile attack in months.

The Pakistani army has mounted a rescue operation and said it had evacuated an unspecified number of hostages. It said exchange of fire continued.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Updated

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