The country’s security forces say that their operation to secure the area had been concluded, with all of the attackers left dead, and that they were now searching for survivors and disabling any booby-traps which the attackers may have set up over the course of their attack, RIA Novosti reported.
The army spokesman also confirmed that the attackers made no demands, starting to kill students as soon as they had entered the school, Reuters reported. This confirms earlier reports by students who had managed to escape the besieged school. Pupils said earlier that the gunmen had gone from classroom to classroom indiscriminately shooting children while shouting “God is Great”.
The Taliban has said that the attack was a response to Pakistani army operations in North Waziristan and the Khyber area.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has called the attack a national tragedy, telling Pakistani newspaper Dawn that “unless this country is cleansed from terrorism, this war and effort will not stop.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his heartfelt sympathy to Pakistan over the tragedy, noting that in India “we share their pain [and] offer our deepest condolences,” and that the attack was “a senseless act of unspeakable brutality,” claiming the “lives of the most innocent of human beings –young children in their school.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has accused the Talibanof “sinking to an all-time low,” saying its ideology “bears no resemblance to any religion or any cultural norms.”
The Guardian has explained that the attack has now become the worst terrorist attack in Pakistan’s history, surpassing the number killed in the Meena Bazaar bombing attack of 2009, which took the lives of 137 people and injured over 200 others.
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