PAKISTAN - Taliban Massacre

"Taliban massacre of schoolchildren shocks Pakistan" PBS NewsHour 12/16/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  The people of Pakistan were staggered today by the worst terror attack in at least seven years.  When it was over, scores of young students lay dead at the hands of Taliban gunmen.

Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner begins our coverage.

MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour):  The wounded children were brought to a hospital in Peshawar, one after another, some on stretchers, others in the arms of teachers or parents, their dark green school uniforms bloody.  Most of the dead were students at a military-run school for first-through-10th graders, along with nine staffers.  Classes were under way when the Taliban killers stormed in.

STUDENT (through interpreter):  As soon as the firing started, our teacher made us sit in a corner and told us to lower our heads.  After around an hour, army personnel came and rescued us.  We saw in the corridors our friends who had been shot three or four times, some dead and some injured.  Their blood had spilled all over the place.

MAN (through interpreter):  I’m the physics lab assistant.  We were sitting in the canteen.  We saw six people climbing from the wall.  We thought it must be the children playing some game.  But then we saw a lot of firearms with them.  They started firing at us, so we ran into the classrooms and closed the doors.

MARGARET WARNER:  Army commandos ended the siege eight hours later.  Officials said seven attackers, all wearing explosive vests, were killed.

The Taliban attacks Pakistani schools frequently, but never on the scale of today’s slaughter.  The Pakistani Taliban claimed it was in retaliation for a new government military offensive in North Waziristan.  That’s a tribal area west of Peshawar used as a base by Taliban and other extremist groups to launch terror attacks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For years, the United States had urged Pakistan’s government to clear out the safe haven, to no effect.  But, in June, after a militant assault on Karachi’s international airport that killed dozens, Pakistani forces launched a concerted campaign in North Waziristan, and recently boasted of killing nearly 2,000 militants there.

Rushing to Peshawar today, Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, vowed, the military offensive will not falter.