12 killed as Taliban hit school in Peshawar

Peshawar, Dec. 1: Three burqa- clad Taliban militants on Friday stormed an agriculture training institute in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar and opened indiscriminate fire, killing at least 12 people, half of them students, before being shot dead by security forces.

The heavily- armed militants, who arrived on an auto rickshaw, attacked the students’ hostel of the Directorate of Agriculture Extension on the University Road in the city, the capital of the restive KhyberPakhtunkhwa province.

The institute was closed for the Id- e- Milad holiday, but about 70 students were present in the hostel.

The militants stormed the building by firing automatic weapons, creating panic, officials said.

The Tehreek- i- Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack. Police chief of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province Salahuddin Mehsud said 12 people, including six students, a security guard and five civilians, were killed and 32 others injured in the attack.

Beijing: A 63- year- old Tibetan monk has self- immolated in southwest China in protest against Beijing’s presence in Tibet, campaigners said, the fifth person to do so this year. Mr Tenga, a popular monk and volunteer teacher of village children, died after setting himself ablaze Sunday in Sichuan province’s Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, said the International Campaign for Tibet ( ICT), headquartered in Washington. The group said he was the 151st Tibetan to selfimmolate since 2009.