The Pakistani city of Peshawar has started burying its dead after a Taliban attack at a school killed at least 132 children and nine staff on Tuesday. BBC reports:
New images from the school show the brutality of the attack, with pools of blood on the ground and walls covered in pockmarks from hundreds of bullets. Mass funerals and prayer vigils for the victims are currently under way. Gunmen had walked from class to class shooting students in the Pakistani Taliban’s deadliest attack to date.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared three days of mourning over the massacre, which has sparked national outrage. He also announced an end to the moratorium on the death penalty for terrorism cases, which correspondents say is a move aimed at countering a view held by many Pakistanis that many terror suspects end up evading justice. World leaders have also voiced disgust at the attack, which even the Afghan Taliban have criticised.
It is a very eerie atmosphere. These are premises that should be alive at a time of day like this to the sound of hundreds of children who studied here and began school as normal on Tuesday. But it is desolate now. The army has been working through the night to clear the premises of explosives.
I am standing now at the bottom of the white stone steps that lead up to the auditorium. There are blood stains running right down the steps and towards the auditorium itself. There is a child’s shoe on one of the steps. The auditorium, where children were taking exams, was one of the places within the school grounds that the militants first targeted.
