Pakistan Taliban 'kill 100' in assault on Peshawar school

[crash]

At least 100 people, 80 of them children, have been killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in Peshawar, Pakistani officials say.
Five or six militants wearing security uniforms entered the school, officials said. Gunfire and explosions were heard as security forces surrounded the area. The army says most of the school's 500 students have been evacuated. It is not clear how many are being held hostage.

A Taliban spokesman says the assault is in response to army operations.
Hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to have died in a recent military offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area.
A school worker and a student interviewed by the local Geo TV station said the attackers had entered the Army Public School's auditorium, where a military team was conducting first-aid training for students.

Mudassir Awan, a worker at the school, said he saw six people scaling the walls of the school. "We thought it must be the children playing some game," he told Reuters news agency. "But then we saw a lot of firearms with them.
"As soon as the firing started, we ran to our classrooms," he said. "They were entering every class and they were killing the children."
Locals said they also heard screams of students and teachers.
Ambulances have been carrying the injured to a nearby hospital. A helicopter is also in the area.

The dead are said to include teachers, as well as a paramilitary soldier.
The attack started at 10 am local time (0500 GMT).
The school is at the edge of a military cantonment in Peshawar, which has seen some of the worst of the violence during a Taliban insurgency in recent years.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has described the attack as a "national tragedy".

Story

[Duchess]

I'm just waking up to this. It's horrible. All those children. My God.

[Cutz]

Ugh. Terrible.

Hope there's serious blowback on the Taliban for this.

[SIXFOOTERsez]

Ugh. Terrible.

Hope there's serious blowback on the Taliban for this.

Bullshit, those asshats over there couldn't give a fuck. If they did they would be doing something about it before this.
There will be some media outrage, Oboma will say something stupid, we might sell some more guns. Next week they will be forgotten.

[HairOfTheDog]

I don't know, Six.

It seems that the six militants who stormed the school were responding to what Pakistani military (I guess they are amongst the "asshats" you're talking about?) have already been doing about "this".

Those asshats have either been offensively pursuing or defensively hitting Taliban tribes for the last couple of years. The hit on the army-run school was reportedly payback for anti-Taliban initiatives.

If it turns out that any of the 5 prominent (Afghan) Taliban members that Obama released from Gitmo in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl was involved in the planning of this terrible attack on the army school, Obama will definitely be skewered. (ETA: I've seen no one speculate about such a link; my pondering only.)

[SIXFOOTERsez]

Well, if something good was to come out of this attack, skewering obama would be nice

[HairOfTheDog]

Okay.

I don't think a skewering of Obama could convert a massacre of 80+ children and dozens of adults into something good, but that's just me.

Anyway, I'm frustrated with Obama on many fronts, but I can't see how he's deserving of any heat for the school massacre in Pakistan unless the released Afghan Taliban captives were somehow involved (and I have no idea whether there's even a remote possibility of that being the case).

[SIXFOOTERsez]

Didn't mean to make it sound like anything would at all mitigate what happened to those kids, there are no extenuating circumstances or anything else in the world that would make that ok.
As to skewering obama, of course that would only happen If one of the assholes he released is found to be at the root of any of this. Someone is to blame, so just to make things line up nicely, I hope it is one of them.

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, as an American citizen, I hope that there is no tie-in whatsoever between the massacre today and the U.S.

It looks to me, at this time, that the terrible attack was motivated and made possible by internal Pakistani conflict only. The latest update is worse than earlier reports indicated.

3:32 p.m. ET

The death toll in Tuesday's Taliban attack at a school in Pakistan has climbed to 145, military spokesman Gen. Asim Bajwa said. The toll includes 132 children, 10 members of the school's staff and three soldiers, he told CNN's Hala Gorani.

[Previous story, posted at 2:44 p.m ET]

Taliban slaughter at least 141, mostly children, in Pakistan school

"'God is great,'" the Taliban militants exclaimed, as they roared through the hallways of a school in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Then, 14-year-old student Ahmed Faraz recalled, one of them changed the narrative.

" 'A lot of the children are under the benches,' " a Pakistani Taliban said, according to Ahmed. " 'Kill them.' "

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/16/world/...?hpt=hp_t1

[Maggot]

Pakistan has nuclear bombs. The Taliban wants them. India has a big stake in anything Pakistani. These innocent children slaughtered displays the mentality of these madmen. They do the most shocking things to show their strength but really all it does is display their fear.

[Duchess]

I read they were soldier's children and the wife of one was a teacher there. The report said they doused her with a flammable liquid and set her afire and made her students watch her burn to death. They all must have been so frightened :(

[Midwest Spy]

Absolute fucking cowardly animals.

How can human beings do this? No compassion, empathy, nothing?

Islam has got to be one of the most vile ideologies the world has ever seen. Too many people are slaughtering innocents in the name of Allah, or because the Koran says it's okay.

Islam is a black plague on the earth.

[Maggot]

I know, it turns switches in my brain that are evil and unmerciful, I don't get it either.

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, if something good was to come out of this attack, skewering obama would be nice

Well, turns out some analysts are attempting to tie US actions and influence to the school massacre.

But, that analysis traces back to GW Bush's era up to the present.

Snip:
In traditional Pashtun culture, thousands of years old, women and children were left untouched in warfare. No self-respecting man would harm a woman or a child. He would not be welcomed back to his village, and women would mock him. What kind of man kills women or children?

In June, under pressure from the U.S., which wants to leave Afghanistan and not worry about more attacks, the Pakistani Army went into the tribal areas along the Afghan border that are the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban. The Pakistani Army is still there -- with planes, artillery, and tanks killing Taliban, but also women and children.

Before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Pakistani Army never went into the tribal areas. Never. The first time was in 2003, again under pressure from the U.S.

The Taliban have few ways to strike back. This is asymmetric warfare. The Taliban are desperate, and will never give in. They are Pashtuns lashing out at the Punjabi Pakistani Army. This is an ethnic battle as well. The Punjabis are the largest ethnic group in Pakistan. About 80% of the Pakistani bureaucracy is Punjabi and it is the same for the Army. This argument only goes so far as the school, in Peshawar, along the border, where the Pashtuns live, probably had many Pashtun student who were children of the military. Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/taliban-scho...-children/

Regardless of who's responsible (and, personally, I think it's only the attackers themselves on this one), this was by all accounts a revenge massacre for the Pakistani military's attacks on Taliban tribal bases.

It's being reported today that 77 militants were killed by the Pakistani military in retaliation for the school strike. The recent operations suggest Pakistan is sticking to its renewed commitment to rout out terrorists. The citizens of Pakistan, even those who sympathized with the Taliaban, appear to be fully outraged by the targeted slaughter of children. Ref: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world.../20627767/