Burqaclad gunmen strike Pakistan varsity, 9 killed
Security forces successfully neutralise all attackers
ISLAMABAD: Taliban fighters disguised in burqas stormed Peshawar’s Agricultural Training Institute on Friday morning, killing at least nine people and injuring a further 32, many of them students.
The men, who reportedly arrived in an auto-rickshaw, attacked the students’ hostel. The institute was closed for the Eid-e-milad holiday.
The Tehreek-e-taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack. It also posted a photo of the three attackers with Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah.
An operation launched by security forces, assisted by military helicopters conducting aerial surveillance of the premises, was successful in killing the three attackers.
Pakistan Army spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor confirmed all three attackers were dead, adding that the identity of a fourth suspected attacker was being confirmed.
Khyber-pakhtunkhwa police said they recovered three suicide jackets, 20 grenades and small arms and ammunition from the bodies of the terrorists.
Local police chief Salahuddin Mehsud claimed the men were aided by foreign intelligence agencies, while Ghafoor said the men were in contact with their handlers in Afghanistan during the attack.
Mehsud also said security forces were able to secure a second hostel before the terrorists could reach it. “There were around 60 people in one hostel and 50-60 in the other,” he said, adding that residential colonies are located in the surrounding area.
“If the hostels and houses had not been evacuated in a timely manner, the number of casualties could have been in the hundreds,” he said.
Peshawar — the capital of the restive Khyber-pakhtunkhwa province and close to the Afghan border — has seen some of the worst violence of the Taliban insurgency in recent years.
In 2014, 147 people, including 132 schoolchildren, were massacred in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s history when terrorists stormed the Army Public School in Peshawar Cantonment. Two years later, 21 students and staff members of Bacha Khan University in Charsadda were killed in a terror attack.