On December 16, 2014, seven gunmen from the Pakistan Taliban stormed the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan.
The shooters murdered 144 people, walking desk to desk and executing children aged 12 to 16. "Our men attacked the school and killed children of army personnel - not civilians,” TTP leader Maulana Fazlullah said, as though that somehow justified the massacre. “They asked about their identity before killing them [and] these people will always be our target and we will kill them in the streets, markets, everywhere,” he added.
A little over a year later, Pakistani students were once again targeted by militants in a tragic attack that left dozens dead on Wednesday in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a mere 25 miles from the site of the Army Public School attack.
“The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels,” Reuters writes, recounting the horrific details.
"They came from behind and there was a big commotion," one student told local media. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately,” he said. “Some people hid in bathrooms."
In the wake of the chaos, senior Pakistani Taliban commander Umar Mansoor (who some say was the mastermind behind the 2014 attack) claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s assault, saying the school is a “government institution that supports the army.”
Later, an official spokesperson for the Taliban denied the group’s senior leadership was involved. “Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty,” a statement from official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani reads. "We strongly condemn the attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda and disown the attack, saying this is not according to Shariah."
So a bit of militant miscommunication it would appear.
Whether or not this was an officially sanctioned attack or not is immaterial because as you can see from the indelible images shown below, Pakistani students are the furthest thing from “safe and protected,” to quote Khorasani.
This, apparently, is the type of “security” that billions in US taxpayer funded anti-terror aid buys for Pakistani citizens: