Pakistan varsity attackers vow to target schools

High-level panel to investigate massacre

A Taliban splinter group — that claimed responsibility for this week’s terror strike on Bacha Khan University on Charsadda — on Friday warned of more attacks on schools.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on the university that killed 21 people — mostly students.

The group has now issued a video message vowing to target schools throughout the country, calling them “nurseries” for people who challenge Allah’s law.

The video, which spread rapidly on Facebook but was not released on official media accounts for the TTP, shows Khalifa Umar Mansoor.

Heavily armed gunmen stormed the campus in Charsadda that had chilling echoes of a 2014 assault on the Army Public School in nearby Peshawar, also claimed by Mansoor’s faction.

The rampage threatened to shatter the sense of security growing in the troubled region a year after the Peshawar attack, which left more than 150 people dead — mostly children.

In the video released on Friday, Mansoor said his faction had attacked the university “because this is the place where lawyers are made, this is the place that produces military officers, this is the place that produces members of the Parliament, all of whom challenge Allah’s sovereignty”.

Instead of targeting arm-ed soldiers, he said, “we will target the nurseries that produce these people.” “We will continue to attack schools, colleges and universities across Pakistan as these are the foundations that produce apostates. We will target and demolish the foundations,” he said.

Mansoor had released a similar video in the wake of the Peshawar attack on December 16, 2014, Pakistan’s deadliest ever extremist assault.

He said schools like the one in Peshawar were “preparing those generals, brigadiers and majors who killed and arrested so many fighters.”

“If our women and children died as martyrs your children will not escape. If you attack us we will take revenge for the innocents,” he said in the video message, also posted online.

In the wake of the attack, Pakistan on Friday decided to form a high-level committee to investigate security arrangements made on the day of the deadly terror attack on Bacha Khan University. The probe committee will identify elements responsible for any negligence in security of the university and was directed to submit its report within five days.

Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities evacuated a girls’ school on Friday when hundreds of terrified parents rushed to save their daughters after rumours of an attack.

The police said rumours of an attack at the Tandl-ianwala girls’ high school in Faisalabad had spread swiftly, sending teachers and students racing for safety. “The panic increased after a security guard fired shots in the air as students and teachers were running to the main gate,” Mehar Fazal Abbas, a senior police official, said.