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Pakistan mourns 142 slain in Taliban school attack

Pakistanis mourned as mass funerals got underway Wednesday for 142 people, most of them children, killed the day before in a massacre by the Taliban at a military-run school in the country's troubled northwest.

 

Prayer vigils were held across the nation and in other schools, students spoke of their shock at the carnage in the city of Peshawar, where seven Taliban gunmen, explosives strapped to their bodies, scaled a back wall using a ladder to get into the Army Public School and College in the morning hours on Tuesday.

 

Students were gunned down and some of the female teachers were burned alive. The attack was the deadliest slaughter of innocents in the country and horrified a nation already weary of unending terrorist assaults. Army commandos fought the Taliban in a day-long battle until the school was cleared and the attackers dead.

 

The school was a scene of heart-wrenching devastation as media were allowed in for the first time Wednesday. Blood pooled on the floor and the stairs, amid broken window glass and door frames. Torn notebooks, pieces of clothing and children's shoes were scattered about. A pair of child's eyeglasses lay broken on the ground.

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.17.14, 11:21