At Least 20 Killed After Militants Open Fire At University in Pakistan (VIDEO)
Rescue workers shout to clear the way for an ambulance transporting injured victims from Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country’s northwest Wednesday, killing many people, officials said. (Mohammad Sajjad) / AP)
At least 20 people have been killed and around 50 wounded following a gun and bomb attack on a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday. Four suspected attackers also died in a battle that lasted nearly three hours at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda.
While there are conflicting reports about whether Taliban militants carried out the assault, the group killed 130 students at a school in the city of Peshawar, 30 miles from Charsadda, in 2014.
Pakistan has escalated counterterrorism operations since 2013, waging campaigns in tribal areas in the country’s mountainous northwest that have long been strongholds for the Taliban, al Qaeda and other terror groups.
The New York Times reports:
The dead included two female students, a senior faculty member and four guards, said Fakhr-i-Alam, the senior government official. A Pakistani military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, has said that at least four attackers were killed in exchanges of fire with the security forces. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault.
Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, condemned the attack, which had “reportedly resulted into the loss of precious human lives and injured many others,” according to an official statement.
“Bomb disposal people are on the spot defusing suicide vests,” said Mr. Fakhr-i-Alam. “The operation is over, clearance and search is on.”
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban called reporters in Peshawar to claim responsibility for the attack and say that four of their men were involved.
A school official said that when she and her colleagues realized they were under attack, they locked the door of their office, turned off the lights and lay on the floor. “The university has its own security staff, but it’s not adequate enough to face the well-armed and -trained Taliban,” said the official, Salma Khan.
She said many of the students were killed in their dormitories. “Our resolve of educating our children cannot be shaken by such cowardly acts,” she said.
Kasib Jan, a student, told ARY TV that he had seen four or five gunmen with black turbans shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.”
“They were firing all around,” he said. “University security guards first engaged them, but it was beyond their capacities. We hid behind the benches in the classrooms. We heard them walking around, but they moved away. We came out and ran away to safety.”
Read more here.
This BBC News video describes the scene after the attack.
—Posted by Roisin Davis
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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/at_least_20_killed_after_militants_open_fire_at_pakistan_university_2016012/
