Dozens arrested as forces comb Charsadda post-university attack

Defiant authorities kept schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province open Thursday.

Pakistan has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched after Taliban gunmen massacred 134 children at a military-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December 2014.

Pakistani women pray for Bacha Khan University victims at a sports complex in Islamabad, on January …

“I want to tell the terrorists, they can never win, they will lose, we will win, we the followers of peace and not terrorism”, said Shah Hussain, father of the caretaker Fakhr-e-Alam.

“We saw three terrorists shouting, ‘Allah is great, ‘ and rushing towards the stairs of our department”, one man told reporters. His students managed to get away as he single-handedly took on the militants during the assault Wednesday that killed 19 students and another professor and wounded 22.

VIGILS have been held in Peshawar and elsewhere in Pakistan for at least 21 people killed in a university attack. It also heightens fears that institutions like Edwardes College in Peshawar, where I was principal for four years until 2010, will be attacked. They have a dual mission: “first to vitiate the minds of the Pakhtoons from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan against the Afghans because Afghanistan is supporting the cause of an independent Pakhtoonistan”, she said.

The tragedy follows a string of attacks by the Pakistani Taliban on schools and other “soft targets”.

The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began, and that four gunmen were dead.

Though, a spokesperson from the Taliban, Mohammad Khorasani, issued a conflicting statement shortly after Mansoor’s claim, in which Khorasani condemned the attack, terming it “against Shariah”.

BBC said there is a symbolic value attached to Bacha Khan University, as it is named after a Pashtun nationalist leader who believed in non-violent struggle.

Pakistani officials say the Pakistan Taliban chief known as Mullah Fazlullah has been orchestrating raids on Pakistan from Afghanistan, where he fled several years ago after a Pakistani army offensive against his stronghold in the Swat Valley. It also comes as Pakistan seeks to improve ties with India and Afghanistan – two countries that have accused it of not doing enough to reign in terror, especially militant outfits that operate across the border in India and Afghanistan.

A splinter group of the outlawed TTP, which was behind the APS massacre, had claimed responsibility for the Bacha Khan University attack in a Facebook post.

Flags will fly at half-mast on all government buildings inside and outside the country, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office said, while a prayer ceremony will be held in the capital Islamabad.

Fierce firing and at least 10 blasts were heard in the campus following the attack, the reports said.

Umar Naray who also goes by the names of Umar Mansoor, Khalifa Umar and Umar Adinzai was the commander of banned TTP in Darra Adam Khel and Peshawar (Tariq Geedar Afridi group).