Weekly2-Taliban killed 132 children

At least 132 students and nine staff members were killed on Tuesday when Taliban gunmen broke into a school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and opened fire, witnesses said, in the bloodiest massacre the country has seen for years.

More than eight hours after militants slipped into the heavily guarded compound through a back entrance, the army declared the operation to flush them out over, and said that all nine insurgents had been killed.

The attack on a military-run high school attended by more than 1,100 people, many of them children of army personnel, struck at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment, an assault certain to enrage the country's powerful army.

Wounded children taken to nearby hospitals told Reuters most victims died when gunmen, suicide vests strapped to their bodies, entered the compound and opened fire indiscriminately on boys, girls and their teachers.

The Taliban, waging war against Pakistan in order to topple the government and set up an Islamic state(伊斯蘭國家), immediately claimed responsibility.

SUICIDE BOMBERS

The Taliban said the gunmen had been equipped with suicide vests and at least three explosions were heard inside the high school at the height of the massacre.

Outside, as helicopters(直昇機) rumbled overhead, police struggled to hold back distraught parents who were trying to break past a security cordon and get into the school.

Officials said 121 pupils and three staff members were wounded. A local hospital said the dead and injured were aged from 10 to 20 years old.

A Reuther's correspondent visiting the city's major Combined Military Hospital(聯合軍隊醫院) said its corridors were lined with dead students, their green-and-yellow school uniform ties peeping out of the white body bags.

The gunmen, who several students said communicated with each other in a foreign language, possibly Arabic, managed to slip past the school's tight security because at least some of them were wearing Pakistani military uniforms, some witnesses said.

VIOLENCE

The Pakistani Taliban have vowed to step up attacks in response to a major army operation against the insurgents in the tribal areas.

But despite the crackdown this year, the military has long been accused of being too lenient toward Islamist militants who critics say are used to carry out the army's bidding in places like Kashmir and Afghanistan.

The military denies the accusations.

So far the Taliban have targeted mainly security forces, military bases and airports, but attacks on civilian targets with no logistical significance are relatively rare.

In September, 2013, however, dozens of people, including many children, were killed in an attack on a church, also in Peshawar in Pakistan's northwest.

The assault on a school where officers' children studied could push the armed forces into a more drastic response.

In India, Pakistan's long-time rival, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his shock. The Afghan Taliban, which are separate to the Pakistani Taliban, put out a statement condemning the attack as "against the basics of Islam."

Pakistani teenager Malala Yousa
fzai, joint winner of this year's Nobel peace prize for education campaign work and survivor of a Taliban attack in 2012, said she was devastated.

"I am heartbroken by this senseless and cold-blooded act of terror in Peshawar that is unfolding before us," Malala, who now lives in central England, said in a statement.

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Key words:

Massacre 大屠殺

Militants 武裝份子

Insurgents 叛亂份子

Assault 突擊

Indiscriminately 亂

Distraught 發狂的

Correspondent 記者

source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/16/us-pakistan-school-idUSKBN0JU0JO20141216