30 gunned down at university
Taliban own up, but later call Pakistan attack ‘un-Islamic’
ARMED militants stormed a university in volatile north-western Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 30 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said.
A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack “un-Islamic”.
The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a countrywide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan.
A security official said the death toll could rise as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began and that four gunmen were dead.
A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 30 bodies had been recovered, including students, guards, policemen and at least one lecturer, named by the media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain.
Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed.
The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university yesterday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and lecturers in lecture hall and hostels, police said.
Four gunmen, who shot victims execution-style, also killed
Students told the media they saw several young men wielding AK-47s storming the university accommodation, where many students were sleeping.
“They came from behind and there was a big commotion,” an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda’s District Hospital. “We were told by lecturers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms.”
The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital yesterday afternoon to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named.
Vice-chancellor Fazal Rahim said the university has over 3 000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital.
Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men.
He said by phone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army.
But later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from the attack, calling it un-Islamic.
“Youth 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.
The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah.
The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were toppled by a US-backed military action in 2001.
By late yesterday, the military said all four gunmen had been killed.
“The operation is over and the university has been cleared,” Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said.
A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen’s bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen were wearing a suicide vest, but they carried guns and grenades.
Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters circled overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other.