20 slain at Pakistani college
Taliban condemn ‘un-Islamic’ attack by faction of group.
CHARSADDA, Pakistan — Islamic militants stormed a university in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people in an hourslong gunbattle with security forces.
A faction of the Taliban took responsibility for the university attack, though a spokesman for the larger Taliban organization, led by Mullah Fazlullah, denied having anything to do with it and called it “un-Islamic.”
The attack revived memories of the Taliban assault on an army-run school in December 2014 in Peshawar, in which gunmen killed about 150 people, nearly all of them children.
Wednesday’s attack began shortly after classes started at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, a town about 20 miles outside Peshawar, said Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar.
The assailants 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.
Soldiers and police officers raced to the scene and exchanged fire with the attackers. The sound of gunfire and explosions echoed across the campus. Troops later cornered the attackers inside two university blocks, killing all four of them, the army said.
Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa, the army’s spokesman, said 18 students and two teachers were killed.
One of the slain teachers was Syed Hamid Hussain, a chemistry professor who witnesses said opened fire on the gunmen. Hussain fired as he moved backward, herding his class out behind him before being killed in the gunbattle, said student Bilal Khan.
Television footage showed a heavy military presence at the university, with soldiers rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances raced away, taking the wounded to hospitals.
Botany teacher Mohammad Ishtiaq said he saw gunmen enter the building he was in and begin firing automatic rifles as students ran in all directions. He said he locked himself inside a second-floor bathroom and then jumped out the window when he saw one of the attackers approaching. He broke his leg in the fall.
The attackers carried phones with Afghan numbers and “were in touch with their handlers in Afghanistan,” Bajwa said.
A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, said a fourman Taliban team carried out the assault. He said it was in revenge for the killing of scores of militants by Pakistani security forces in recent months, and that the university was attacked because it was “an instrument of the government and army.”
However, a spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan later disowned the group behind Wednesday’s attack, describing the assault as “un-Islamic.” Mohammad Khurasani said those who carry out such attacks should be tried before an Islamic court.
Khurasani said the Taliban “consider the students in nonmilitary institutions the future of our jihad movement” and would not kill potential recruits.
Wednesday’s assault targeted a school named after Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, nicknamed Bacha Khan, a secular figure in Pakistani politics who died in 1988. An ally of Mahatma Gandhi, Khan supported nonviolent resistance to British colonialism and opposed the 1947 partition of land that became India and Pakistan.
His son went on to found the Awami National Party, a secular movement whose vision for Pakistan is opposed to that of the Taliban and other Islamic militants.
In a statement released after Wednesday’s attack, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said his country was “determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland.”
Malala Yousafzai, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012 outside her school in the Swat Valley, said in a statement that she was “heartbroken” by the latest attack.
“My prayers are with the families of all the victims and all those who suffer as a result of extremist violence,” she said in a statement on the Malala Fund’s social media site.
She also called for Pakistani authorities to ensure “that all schools and universities are safe. I urge all people with peace in their hearts to renew their resolve to stand up to terrorism and ignorance, and work together to protect life and learning.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reaffirmed that violence against students, teachers and schools can never be justified and that “the right to education for all must be firmly protected,” said U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.
Ban called for those behind the attack be brought to justice, adding that there must be “proportionate and necessary measures to be taken to ensure that schools in areas of insecurity and conflict are adequately protected,” Haq said.
Pakistan vowed to redouble efforts to combat militants after the 2014 Peshawar school attack, lifting a moratorium on the death penalty and intensifying a military offensive in North Waziristan, a tribal region and longtime stronghold of the Taliban and other militants.
Last month, as the country marked the anniversary of the school attack, the military claimed “phenomenal successes” in the war and said it had killed about 3,500 insurgents since beginning the operation in 2014.
But earlier this week, a suicide bomber struck a crowded police checkpoint on the edge of Peshawar, killing 11 people in an attack claimed by the Taliban. Two attacks last week in the southwestern city of Quetta killed 19 people, including soldiers and police.