Pakistan Taliban: Peshawar school attack leaves 141 dead -- Oh no!
(This is an extensive report from BBC on this horrendous attack by muslim terrorists. Please stick it out if you can. The coverage, which is warranted by the scope of this senseless terrorist carnage, is impressive. Also covered today on FOX.)
Verne Strickland: This report really made me catch my breath. I have a close personal relationship via FB with a devout Christian gentlemen in that country. He heads a Christian school in a location I won't divulge at this moment. Many FB colleagues in the U.S. know, support, and pray for this courageous man. My prayer at this time is that the mission has escaped attack and carnage. It is unthinkable that this should be otherwise. God bless you, my dear Christian friend. I know that the alarm, which has been constant, has been ratcheted up exponentially. We do pray for your safety and well-being.
One 13-year-old hospital patient tells the BBC's Shaimaa Khalil "they were firing...I was hiding under a chair."
Militants
from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked a military-run school in
Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say.
Officials say the attack in the north-western city is over,
with all the attackers killed. Seven militants took part in all,
according to the army. Scores of survivors are being treated in hospitals as frantic parents search for news of their children.
The attack - the Taliban's deadliest in Pakistan - has been widely condemned.
There has been chaos outside hospital units to which casualties were taken, the BBC's Shaimaa Khalil reports from Peshawar.
Bodies have been carried out of hospitals in coffins, escorted by crowds of mourners, some of them wracked by tears.
Coffins were carried out of Peshawar hospitals
Empty coffins were delivered to a hospital in Peshawar in readiness for the removal of the dead
School pupil Mohammad Baqair lost his mother, a teacher, in the attack
Hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to have died in a recent military offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area.
US President Barack Obama said terrorists had "once again shown their depravity" while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said it was "an act of horror and rank cowardice to attack defenceless children while they learn".
Pakistan's policy-makers struggling to come to grips with various shades of militants have often cited a "lack of consensus" and "large pockets of sympathy" for religious militants as a major stumbling-block.
That is probably why, when army chief Gen Raheel Sharif launched what he called an indiscriminate operation earlier in the year against militant groups in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, the political response was lukewarm at best.
We will get them, was his message, be they Pakistani Taliban, Punjabi Taliban, al-Qaeda and affiliates, or most importantly, the dreaded Haqqani network. But the country's political leadership chose to remain largely silent. This is very likely to change now.
Anxious family members crowded around Peshawar hospitals
Troops helped evacuate children from the school
A total of 114 people were injured
All seven of the attackers wore suicide bomb vests, he said. Scores of people were also injured.
It appears the militants scaled walls to get into the school and set off a bomb at the start of the assault.
Children who escaped say the militants then went from one classroom to another, shooting indiscriminately.
One boy told reporters he had been with a group of 10 friends who tried to run away and hide. He was the only one to survive.
Others described seeing pupils lying dead in the corridors. One local woman said her friend's daughter had escaped because her clothing was covered in blood from those around her and she had lain pretending to be dead.
22 September 2013: Militants linked to the Taliban kill at least 80 people at a church in Peshawar, in one of the worst attacks on Christians
10 January 2013: Militant bombers target the Hazara Shia Muslim minority in the city of Quetta, killing 120 at a snooker hall and on a street
28 May 2010: Gunmen attack two mosques of the minority Ahmadi Islamic sect in Lahore, killing more than 80 people
18 October 2007: Twin bomb attack at a rally for Benazir Bhutto in Karachi leaves at least 130 dead. Unclear if Taliban behind attack
Irshadah Bibi, a woman who lost her 12-year-old son, was seen beating her face in grief, throwing herself against an ambulance.
"O God, why did you snatch away my son?" AFP news agency quoted her as saying.
Some of the injured were carried to hospital in people's arms
Both girls and boys went to the school
Troops sealed off the area around the school
Many of the students were the children of military personnel. Most of them would have been aged 16 or under.
Hundreds of parents are outside the school waiting for news of their children, according to Wafis Jan from the Red Crescent
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Mohammad Khurasani said the militants had been "forced" to launch the attack in response to army attacks.
Leading figures in Pakistan expressed grief and indignation
- Pakistani Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai said she and millions of others would mourn the dead children, her "brothers and sisters", adding "we will never be defeated"
- Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif spoke of a "national tragedy"
- Pakistani opposition leader and former cricket captain Imran Khan condemned the attack as "utter barbarism"
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