When the Bacha Khan University came under attack (Eyewitness account)

The attackers climbed over the back walls of the university and shot at a security guard before making their way to the administration building and the male students’ dorms, police official Saeed Khan Wazir said.

Shaukat Yusufzai, information minister for Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province, told reporters that over 25 people – including an assistant professor and two female students – had been killed in the attack.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to fight to the end and destroy the Taliban and other militants.

“We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland”, he said in a statement.

He also says Mullah Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban had nothing to do with the attack.

In a separate development, ISPR Director General Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa said that security forces had received a major information about the Charsadda attack.

A Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar in December 2014 killed over 150 people, mostly children.

That professor is Syed Hamid Husain, who is described in an Agence France-Presse report as firing a pistol at the gunmen and telling students to stay inside their building.

‘Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty, ‘ the statement said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

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

Gov. Sardar Mehtab Abbasi later said the attack was over and that troops were combing nearby areas.

“I personally heard two explosions”, an eyewitness told Geo TV, a Pakistan network, according to BBC.

Bacha Khan University is named after Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a prominent progressive politician and champion of women’s rights.

Pakistan’s northwest and its lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan is a highly volatile region.

The four attackers died in the gun battle that followed the attack, according to local reports.

The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The Peshawar school attack horrified the country and led the government to lift a 2008 moratorium on the death penalty.

An unidentified security official told Reuters the death toll could rise to as high as 40 as authorities continued to clear classrooms at the university.