Condemnations and condolences for attack on Bach Khan University

The prime minister – who had a telephonic conversation with Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif following the attack – said that the operation against terrorists must continue with full-swing.

Officials at two hospitals in the city said a total of six injured people have been brought in from the university, four to the Lady Reading Hospital and two to a Charsadda district hospital.

The attack revived painful memories of the Taliban assault on an army-run school in December 2014, in which gunmen killed around 150 people, almost all of them children. He said it was in revenge for the scores of militants the Pakistani security forces have killed in recent months. Ban said the right to education for all must be firmly protected and reaffirmed that attacks against students, teachers or schools can never be justified.

The attackers carried mobile phones with Afghan numbers and “were in touch with their handlers in Afghanistan”, said Pakistan military spokesman Lt. Gen Asim Bajwa.

“The [Pakistani] Taliban staged minor attacks at the university in the past as well”, said Zaheer Iqbal, former assistant director of planning and development at Bacha Khan University.

Wednesday’s attack was the second major attack in as many days in the volatile northwest. The attackers were later contained inside two university blocks where the troops killed four attackers, the army said.

Armed police, some perched on the roofs of buildings, were still deployed Thursday morning at the Bacha Khan university campus in Charsadda, where students were targeted with grenades and automatic weapons, an AFP reporter said.

An anonymous senior security official said the faces of the attackers were recognisable and their fingerprints had been taken, adding: “We hope we will soon identify them”.

The University, named after the founder of an anti-Taliban Awami National Party and a Pashtun activist, Abdul Ghaffar “Bacha” Khan, was hosting 600 visitors for a poetry recital on the anniversary of the founder’s death.

Despite the conflicting statements from the Pakistani Taliban over responsibility, analysts say the attack probably is the work of the terror group.

The absence of the overall leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Mullah Fazlullah, who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, means that local commanders often operate independently.

Zahoor Ahmed, also a geology student, said that after the first shots were fired the professor had warned him not to leave the building.

Bacha Khan University is in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, of which Peshawar is the provincial capital. “I jumped out when I saw one of the attackers coming toward me and shooting straight ahead of him”.