UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned as “blood-curdling" the Taleban attack on a school in Pakistan on Tuesday as officials raised the death toll at 141.
Ban said the attack on defenseless children was “an act of horror and rank cowardice.”
He told the UN Security Council at the start of a meeting Tuesday that no cause or grievance can justify the killings of mainly children.
“Schools must be safe and secure learning spaces, and getting an education is every child’s right,” he said. “Going to school should not have to be an act of bravery.”
He pledged UN support to Pakistan in its fight against terrorism and urged the government to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice.
“The hearts of the world go out to parents and the families who have lost loved ones,” Ban said.
Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, told a news conference Tuesday that 132 of the dead were children and another nine were staff members.
Several gunmen in government paramilitary uniforms went from classroom to classroom at the Army Public School, shooting children as young as 12. Bajwa said the all wore explosive vests.
Authorities regained control after more than seven hours of fighting that left six militants dead, but explosive devices they left behind were hampering clearance efforts.
The spokesman said they didn’t appear to want to take anyone hostage but instead started firing indiscriminately when they entered the school. But the militants had brought rations for several days, he said, implying that they may have intended to take students hostage.
The school attack is one of the worst in Pakistan’s history.
US President Barack Obama, meanwhile, promised that the United States would stand by Pakistan in its struggle against violent extremism.
“By targeting students and teachers in this heinous attack, terrorists have once again shown their depravity,” he said, after the attack on the army-run school in Peshawar.
“We stand with the people of Pakistan, and reiterate the commitment of the United States to support the government of Pakistan in its efforts to combat terrorism and extremism and to promote peace and stability in the region.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry, in London to speak about a Palestinian bid at the United Nations to force Israel to withdraw from Palestinian land, said images of the attack were “gut-wrenching.”
“Mothers and fathers send their kids to school to learn and to be safe and to dream and find opportunity,” Kerry told reporters.
“Instead today they are gone, wiped away by Taleban assassins who serve a dark and almost medieval vision, the opposite of everything that those mothers and fathers wanted for their children.”
National tragedy
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif described the attack as a “national tragedy unleashed by savages.”
Since June, the Pakistani army has been waging an air and ground campaign against the Taleban in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.
Formed in 2007, the TTP groups a myriad of Islamist factions that have declared a “holy war” against the government for its strategic alliance with the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Tuesday’s TTP attack was the second deadliest in the country’s history after bombings targeting former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in October 2007 that killed 139 people in Karachi.
