Charsadda (Pakistan): At least 21 people were massacred Wednesday by heavily-armed Taliban suicide attackers who stormed a prestigious university here in restive northwestern Pakistan and opened indiscriminate fire, in a grim reminder of the Peshawar army school attack in 2014.
The gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University named after iconic leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan in Charsadda, some 50 kms southwest of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said.
Four militants were also killed as security forces retaliated, bringing the death toll to 25 in the grisly attack. The militants used the cover of thick, wintry fog to scale the walls of the university before entering buildings.
Blasts and heavy gunfire were heard from inside the campus where a poetic symposium was in progress to mark the death anniversary of Baacha Khan who died January 20, 1988. There were about 3,000 students and 600 guests on the campus when the attack took place, vice-chancellor of the university Dr Fazal Rahim said.
A professor, two students and four security guards were among the dead, authorities said.
Army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Salim Bajwa tweeted that four terrorists were killed during operation launched by security forces to clear the University.
The victims were shot in the head or chest. Images from inside the university show a pool of blood on the floor of a dormitory and the charred corpses of two alleged militants lying on a staircase.
Wednesday’s attack comes a little over a year after Taliban militants massacred over 150 people, mostly students, in an assault on an army-run school in Peshawar in December, 2014. PTI
