Afghanistan Taliban Slams Peshawar Slaughter

Islamabad/Peshawar: Afghanistan Taliban have condemned the attack by Pakistani Taliban on a school in Pakistan that killed 141 people on Tuesday.

"The intentional killing of innocent people, children and women are against the basics of Islam and this criteria has to be considered by every Islamic party and government," Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

The Pakistani Taliban are separate from but allied to the Afghan Taliban across the border. Both aim to overthrow their own governments and establish an Islamic state.

141 people, most of them schoolchildren, were massacred by Taliban militants as they stormed a Pakistan Army-run school at Peshawar on Tuesday, wearing paramilitary uniforms and firing indiscriminately.

Over 250 others were injured. There were nearly 1,000 children in the school.

Altogether 132 children and nine staff members at the school were killed. The death toll is likely to go up given the huge number of injured, some of whom are critical, top officials in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province said.

All the seven terrorists were killed after the eight-hour standoff, with four reportedly blowing themselves up. During the siege, the terrorists took several hostages, including teachers and the principal, and used them as human shields.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack. A Taliban spokesman claimed it attacked the Army school in revenge for the military’s operations against militants in the North Waziristan tribal area close to Peshawar.

“We want them to feel our pain,” the spokesman said.

Dressed in Frontier Corps uniforms, the Arabic-speaking terrorists entered the Army Public School on Warsak Road at around 10 am local time, and went from classroom to classroom shooting innocent children in one of the most gruesome terror attacks anywhere.

World leaders united in condemning the attack as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif termed it a “national tragedy” and chaired a security meeting in Peshawar. Mr Sharif reiterated that the military’s Operation Zarb-e-Azab to flush out terrorists from the tribal belt will continue. About 1,300 terrorists have been killed in the operation.

Watch: Eyewitness account of Peshawar school attack