Vigils held as Pakistan mourns students

There were over 3,000 students inside the university along with an additional 600 guests who had arrived to attend a poetic symposium to mark the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan who died on January 20, 1988.

Defiant authorities kept schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province open Thursday.

“Militants want them shut down”, provincial Education Minister Arif Khan told AFP.

At least 21 persons, including security guards, students, a professor, and policemen were killed and dozens injured when the terrorists launched a brazen assault on the varsity in northwestern Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday.

Chaired by Governor Sardar Mahtab Ahmad Khan, the meeting decided that an investigation committee headed by commissioner Peshawar division would investigate the security arrangements on the day of attack at the Bacha Khan University.

It was the deadliest extremist attack in Pakistan’s history.

He also expressed sympathy with the bereaved families of the victims as well as the nation and government of the friendly and brotherly country of Pakistan.

“We need time to clean the campus, make more security arrangement and boost the morale of the students and teachers”, he said.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared Thursday as mourning day across the country.

Mansoor’s group has also claimed responsibility for a 2014 attack on a school in Peshawar that left 150 people – mostly children – dead. We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland.

Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the main Taliban group in Pakistan, disowned the outfit behind the university attack, terming it “un-Islamic” and insisted the Pakistani Taliban was not behind it.

Many the pupil casualties perished in a hostel for young men where the four attackers were cornered by security forces.

“The Pakistani government and terrorist outfits supported by Pakistan are responsible for both the attacks”.

Pakistani army says the attackers have been contained and that four of them have been killed. “I see this as simply as retaliatory, that is the Taliban saying, ‘If you’re going to bring Pakistani special forces and the army up into our turf, you’re going to pay a heavy price'”.

Pakistan has always been seeking action against what it calls “terrorist sanctuaries” of TTP on Afghan soil, especially the group’s leader Mullah Fazlullah, who had been blamed for orchestrating the APS attack.