Peshawar : The school was in session when the principal informed the teachers that the kids will have to be evacuated as there were six armed men shooting randomly
When a band of six terrorists stormed the Army Public School in Peshwar and started killing children, a sense of shock and fear swept those who managed to escape the building.
“Our class had just started, but suddenly our teachers asked us to put our heads down. There were six to seven terrorists”, Mukhtar, a second-year student said.
“It was the fourth period. We were in our classrooms. We saw army personnel arriving…., our teachers said it would be a security drill, but then our principal arrived and asked our teacher that the students have to be evacuated”, a student aged about five said.
“….then we saw they were carrying guns in their hands”, the student added. Uday, a lab assistant at the school, narrated about the horror to reporters.
“We were in canteen when the attack occurred. I hid myself…the army arrived after an hour….but the terrorists were not in classrooms…they were six to seven of them…the firing had stopped…but terrrorists had big rifles with them).”
One of the parents, who rushed to the school after the attack, questioned the possibility of terrorists entering such a school. “When we visit the school, even we are searched along with our vehicles. So this is quite shocking and mysterious to all of us. How could terrorists enter such a building?”
[alert type=”e.g. warning, danger, success, info” title=””]
Top 5 School Attacks
• In 2004, Chechnya’s Riyadhin al-Salihin group 386 killed, over 700 injured and took more than 1,200 school kids and adults as hostage.
• In 1927ex-, school board member Andrew Kehoe set off three bombs in Michigan, USA, killing 45 and injuring 58.
• In 2007, two separate attacks at the Virginia Tech, USA killed 32 and injured 17
• In 1974, n the 26th anniversary of Israeli independence, members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine took a group of 100 high school students hostage. 26 students were killed and 60 injured.
• In 2002, Robert Steinhauser, a 19-year-old expelled student of the Gutenburg Gymnasium School in Germany killed 18 and injured 7. He committed suicede.
[/alert]
Chilling reminder of Beslan siege
Taliban attackers’ brazen assault on a school in Pakistan’s Peshawar city has brought back chilling memories of a similar bloodbath in Russia in 2004 when Chechen rebels stormed a school and killed more than 330 people majority of which were children.
The scale of the violence at the school in Beslan, a city in the North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia, Russia, and the fact that the attackers deliberately targeted young children had traumatised the Russian public and horrified the outside world.
The siege in Beslan began on the morning of September 1, 2004, when at least 32 armed individuals stormed the school and took more than 1,000 hostages, including pupils in both primary and secondary grades and their teachers, as well as parents and their relatives.
“Terrorists have once again shown their depravity…We stand with the people of Pakistan, and reiterate the commitment to support Islamabad in its efforts to fight extremism and to promote peace.”
— Barack Obama,
US President
“I am horrified that children are being killed simply for going to school.”
— David Cameron,
British PM
