No Filipino casualty in Pakistan university attack-DFA

A Taliban splinter group – that claimed responsibility for this week’s terror strike on Bacha Khan University on Charsadda – on Friday warned of more attacks on schools.

The attack, claimed by a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, bore a chilling resemblance to a December 2014 massacre at a school in nearby Peshawar that triggered a crackdown on militants that had been credited with a palpable improvement in security.

However, a spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan disowned the group behind the attack, describing the assault as “un-Islamic”.

“We have not yet identified financiers in the attack but they would also be exposed”, he said. “We will demolish the foundation of this evil system”. One of the teachers who was killed in the Bacha Khan attack reportedly fired on his attackers from his personal weapon.

The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party.

The rampage threatened to shatter the sense of security growing in the troubled region a year after the Peshawar attack, which left more than 150 people dead – mostly children.

One such statement came from the Pakistan Institute of Labour, Education and Research (PILER) which, while vehemently condemning the attack, urged the three major South Asian countries – India, Pakistan and Afghanistan – to realise that the war against terror could not be won without greater regional cooperation.

“COAS asked for their (Afghan leaders’ and Resolute Support Commander) cooperation in locating and targeting those responsible for this heinous act (attack on Bacha Khan University) and bring them to justice”.

“We have arrested four facilitators who helped the attackers enter Pakistan and took them to Mardan before attack on Bacha Khan university in Charsadda district”, Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt Gen Asim Bajwa said.

Most of the victims were buried quickly, according to Muslim tradition, with funerals overnight and early on Thursday, said police.

Around 25 of their relatives held a candlelight vigil in Peshawar late Wednesday for those slain in the latest attack. Four security guards and a professor were also among the injured. 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.

Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave for the department when firing began, Reuters reported.

Several Pakistani opposition politicians criticized the government’s efforts to combat militancy.