PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - At least 132 students and nine staff members were killed on Tuesday after Taliban gunmen broke into a school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and opened fire, witnesses said, in the bloodiest massacre the country has seen for years.
More than eight hours after militants slipped into the heavily guarded compound through a back entrance, the army declared the operation to flush them out over, and said that all nine insurgents had been killed.
The attack on a military-run high school attended by more than 1,100 people, many of them children of army personnel, struck at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment, an assault certain to enrage the country's powerful army.
Wounded children taken to nearby hospitals told Reuters most victims died when gunmen, suicide vests strapped to their bodies, entered the compound and opened fire indiscriminately on boys, girls and their teachers.
"One of my teachers was crying, she was shot in the hand and she was crying in pain," said Shahrukh Khan, 15, who was shot in both legs but survived after hiding under a bench.
"One terrorist then walked up to her and started shooting her until she stopped making any sound. All around me my friends were lying injured and dead."
The Taliban, waging war against Pakistan in order to topple the government and set up an Islamic state, immediately claimed responsibility.
"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females," said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. "We want them to feel the pain."
Replies
Taliban terrorists allegedly burned a teacher alive and made the students watch during their attack on a Pakistan school which left over 130 people dead.
According to a NBC News report, citing an unnamed military official, the terrorists stormed the Army Public school in Peshawar, in north-west Pakistan, and committed the horrific act as well as detonating a suicide bomb which killed a number of students.
"They burnt a teacher in front of the students in a classroom," the unnamed military source told the US TV network.
"They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch."
At least six militants entered the Pakistani school wearing security uniforms, before massacring an estimated 132 people and injuring another 122.
Most of the school's 500 students have been evacuated. The Pakistani army claims to have killed five terrorists and is conducting a search for more, while more hostages are believed to be held inside the school.
Pakistani officials have yet to verify the burning of the teacher, or other reports that some of the bodies of the dead school children are being brought into the hospital headless.
According to a tweet by Omar R Quraishi, an editor at the The Express Tribune who has over 154,000 Twitter followers, "Some of the bodies brought to hospital during the Peshawar school attack have been headless: source."