Gunmen Open Fire Inside Bacha Khan University Near Peshawar

Militants used the cover of thick, wintry fog to scale the walls of the Bacha Khan University in the town of Charsadda, about 18 miles (30km) from the city of Peshawar.

Four of the gunmen have been killed by security forces and the army has contained the militants to two blocks inside the university, a spokesman for the army said on twitter.

A Pakistani Taliban regional group – Omar Mansoor from Darra Adam Khel region – claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack stirred grim echoes of the horrific 2014 Peshawar school attack that killed more than 150 people, mostly children, and shocked the nation.

Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Narendra Modi of India denounced the carnage. The army said that operation has been completed and all the terrorists were killed by the security forces. The operation intensified a year ago after the Peshawar school attack.

Khattak said that the KPK government is fully assisting Pakistan Army, intelligence agencies and other security personnel in launching the investigation against the attack.

Four of the attackers are known to have been killed at the campus building in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in the country’s northwest. The brutal attack echoes another mass shooting at a school in the nearby Pakistani city of Peshawar, which took place in 2014 and saw 130 killed.

A provincial official at the scene of the violence, Shaukat Yousufzai, said at least 50 people were injured.

While they had no clue on how they got trapped in such a awful situation, a Chemistry professor named Syed Hamid Hussain, risking his own life, came to the rescue of his students.

The university has over 3,000 enrolled students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors on Wednesday for a poetry recital on the death anniversary of the Pashtun activist Abdul Ghaffar “Bacha” Khan, the university’s vice chancellor said.

The denial appeared to indicate continued infighting in the Pakistani Taliban, as the Islamic State group seeks to recruit its disaffected fighters.

Attacks on educational institutions are common in Pakistah, and many are against facilities educating girls.

“We’ve seen consistent operations by the Taliban up in this area”, CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd said.

“Any act of terrorism is an attack on humanity and is highly condemnable”.

Security and analysts, however, have repeatedly stressed that the Pakistani Taliban was still capable of pulling off headline-grabbing attacks, especially in the northwestern part of the country.

Police, soldiers and special forces swarmed the university from the ground and the air to try to shut down the assault. Pakistan hanged four militants last month who were sentenced to death over the attack. Police said earlier that other attackers were believed to be at large on the second and third floors of the campus buildings.

The main spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Mohammad Khurasani, also reiterated the claim of responsibility.