Pakistan schools close on anniversary of deadly school siege

Sharif, while addressing the ceremony to observe the first anniversary of the attacks and remember the victims, said the operation against militants will continue until the threat of militancy is eliminated.

In a bid to protect from further attack, all schools had been ordered to rapidly build walls and extra defences, and the authorities at the Peshawar army school carried out massive renovations in an attempt to remove the memory of the attack.

One year after Pakistan’s worst militant attack, families of children killed or wounded in the Peshawar school massacre say the local government has broken its promise to help pay for medical treatment.

Pakistani children hold candles during a demonstration in connection with first anniversary of the school attack, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015 in Peshawar, Pakistan.

On social media, Pakistanis were changing their profile pictures to an image depicting an Army Public School uniform with a bloody bullet hole resembling a poppy, and a caption reading: “Some stains don’t wash out”.

Of the 151 people slaughtered by the Taliban in the hours-long siege, 134 were children, according to the army’s final toll.

Government spokesman Mushtaq Ghani said Wednesday the closure is part a day of national mourning and a precaution against militant attacks tied to the anniversary. “The end of the moratorium on the death penalty has resulted in more executions of non-terrorists than terrorists”, said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States and a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “Several terrorist groups…and the Afghan Taliban still flourish”.

Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, CJSC General Rashid Mehmood, chief ministers of four provinces, chief minister Gilgit Baltistan, Governor KPK and Gilgit Baltistan, PTI chairman Imran Khan, JI chief Sirajul Haq and other leading political and military leaders were also present in the ceremony. “Martyrs never die. I still feel that my son is around”, she told The Associated Press. “Every child of this school is my son”.

In another display of solidarity with the victims of the Peshawar school attack, vehicular traffic remained halted for two minutes beginning 10 a.m.in Lahore, and one-minute silence was observed to mark the tragic incident.