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Peshawar, Pakistan: Taliban gunmen who stormed a school in northwest Pakistan toyed with captive students by suggesting some could be let go before lining them up and gunning them down in front of their classmates, according to a new account by survivors.

The other guy standing near the door said 'I want eight more students now so whose turn is it to die first?'

Militants rampaged through an army-run school in Peshawar and killed at least 141 people on Tuesday, almost all of them children.
A Pakistani camera man shoots video in front of a bullet-riddled wall at the arm- run school a day after an attack by Taliban militants in Peshawar.

A Pakistani camera man shoots video in front of a bullet-riddled wall at the arm- run school a day after an attack by Taliban militants in Peshawar. Photo: AFP

Pakistan was in mourning on Wednesday over the attack, the bloodiest in the nation's history, which brought international condemnation and promises of a stern crackdown by political and military leaders.

Previous accounts by witnesses have indicated a pattern of indiscriminate firing on students with those fortunate enough to survive playing dead while the attackers moved on.

But Shahnawaz Khan, a 14-year-old who was being treated in a Peshawar hospital for two bullet wounds to his shoulder, said the attackers also engaged in sadistic games.
A girl's shoe lies on the floor in the bloodied ceremony hall at a school a day after an attack by Taliban militants in Peshawar.

A girl's shoe lies on the floor in the bloodied ceremony hall at a school a day after an attack by Taliban militants in Peshawar. Photo: AFP

He said he and his class were in the middle of English grammar lecture when they heard gunshots, though their teacher said it was a first-aid class and the sound could be coming from a demonstration.

"But after a while the sounds of gunshots grew louder and we were hearing screams of students," said Khan, the son of a former local government official.

"Our teacher opened the door and suddenly rushed back to the room and shouted get under the benches, he was trying to lock the door when someone pushed it from outside and he fell to the ground.

"Two men wearing army-like uniforms carrying AK-47s barged into the room and told us not to make any noise and do as they say."

Khan said the man asked for eight students who wish to be let go to raise their hands, with almost the entire class responding to the call by doing so.

"They took eight students of their choice and made them stand in front of the class near the blackboard facing the wall and told us to watch the students," he continued, as one of gunmen, whom Khan described as burly, forced the class teacher on to a chair.

"He told our teacher: 'Watch as your loved ones die. Ours are also being killed in the same way.'"

The gunmen then opened fire on the children who slumped to the ground, some dead and others writhing and moaning in agony.

Khan continued: "The other guy standing near the door said 'I want eight more students now so whose turn is it to die first?' Nobody raised their hands and he tried to grab students and take them in front of the class but the students were grabbing each other tightly refusing to go."

As the students struggled, Khan said one gunman turned to the other and told him they should leave because they could hear troops arriving.

"Then they started spraying bullets on us indiscriminately and left, I got two bullets on my shoulder. I took my tie and tried to stop my bleeding but I fell unconscious," said Khan, adding that he awoke on a hospital bed and did not know how many others had survived.

His account was confirmed by the class teacher, who also survived and was being treated in the same hospital for bullet wounds to his shoulder and chest.

"I wanted to help them but I was helpless," the 46-year-old said who did not wish to be named said as he wept.

TTP spokesman Muhammad Khorasani claimed the school attack as revenge for a military offensive against militant strongholds, saying they wanted the army to "feel the pain" they had felt at losing loved ones.

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Pakistan buried its slaughtered children on Wednesday, as the prime minister on Wednesday promised a day of reckoning with militants behind the attack and the country’s own history of backing some violent groups.

The brutal attack on a prestigious army school killed 148, mostly students, in a bloody eight-hour siege that horrified even a country numbed by years of bombings, assassinations and suicide assaults.

Facing a wave of anger and grief, Nawaz Sharif lifted a moratorium on the death penalty for terror-related cases, and announced a dramatic shift in government policy towards extremist groups.

“We announce that there will be no differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban,” he said, referring to the Pakistani military’s long history of clandestine support for those militant groups it believes support its own strategic objectives.

These have mostly been groups Islamabad sees as offsetting Indian influence, from violent separatist groups in Kashmir, to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“We have resolved to continue the war against terrorism till the last terrorist is eliminated,” he told a select group of politicians summoned to Peshawar, the site of the attack. “[The country] must never forget these scenes.”

Sharif also echoed army commanders’ vows to step up military action against strongholds along the porous mountain border with Afghanistan.

With the country beginning three days of mourning, the army’s chief of staff, Raheel Sharif, headed to Kabul for talks with the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, over tackling senior members of the Pakistani Taliban, based in the country’s lawless east.

His top priority will almost certainly be to secure Afghanistan’s cooperation in capturing Mullah Fazlullah, the group’s leader.
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The tragedy that prompted the visit gave it urgency and gravity, but the irony of Pakistan’s request will be lost on few in the region.

For years Kabul has begged Pakistan to root out the Afghan Taliban leadership hiding inside its border, including its leader Mullah Omar. Instead they have been tolerated, and sometimes supported, Afghan intelligence officials say.

In recent years though, the extremist violence that has tormented Afghanistan so long has become increasingly familiar across the border.

The school assault was unprecedented in its bloody sadism towards children, but comes after a string of other high-profile attacks, including on the international airport in the port city of Karachi.

Seven members of the Pakistan Taliban, or Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), scaled the school wall on Tuesday morning, some wearing suicide vests.

Inside they opened fire on students and teachers, including dozens attending a first aid training session in a large auditorium, leaving the rows of seats slick with blood and the walls pockmarked with bullets.

The siege lasted about eight hours, with commandos killing some of the attackers, while others blew themselves up. Some of the dead were buried on Tuesday, but most of the funerals were to be held on Wednesday.

The father of one of the children, Akhtar Hussain, a labourer who said he had worked for years in Dubai to provide for his family, told the Associated Press: “They finished in minutes what I had lived my whole life for, my son.”

As he buried 14-year-old Fahad, he said: “That innocent one is now gone in the grave, and I can’t wait to join him. I can’t live any more.”

Analysts have long argued that the toll of insurgent attacks on Pakistani society and the army itself would eventually prompt a shift in attitudes inside the military, whose secretive ISI intelligence agency is widely believed to manage relations with extremist groups.

But the sweeping crackdown Kabul wants has so far not materialised, and Afghanistan has been reluctant to chase Pakistani militants while its own enemies are left in relative peace, drawing the two governments into a cycle of bloodshed and destruction.

That was reinforced on Wednesday, when insurgents attacked a bank in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, just as funeral rites for Tuesday’s victims were getting under way. At least 10 people were killed, Reuters reported.

Ghani, Afghanistan’s new president, wants to reset ties with Islamabad, and appears convinced that collaboration with Pakistan is the only path to peace for either nation.

“The time has arrived for Afghanistan and Pakistan to act together against terrorism and extremism with honesty and effectiveness,” Ghani said in a statement after the latest meeting, which also included the ISI chief, General Raheel.

Neither side disclosed the content of the meeting, but Pakistan said it had shared intelligence with Ghani.

“We are hoping that we will see strong action from the Afghan side in the coming days,” the Pakistani army spokesman Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa said, adding that the new leadership in Kabul had shown it was willing to act.

However, Ghani is also a fierce nationalist, and is unlikely to agree any kind of long-term assistance tracking Pakistani Taliban in his country unless it is matched by a genuine crackdown on Afghan fighters sheltering in Pakistan.

It remains to be seen if Pakistan’s military leadership shares the prime minister’s resolve, or if the civilian government will be able to crack down on groups who have carved out important roles for themselves providing services in a poor country with a weak state.

Their ambiguous position was on display at one of the funerals attended by the Guardian, where men with FIF placards mingled among the crowd.

A welfare organisation that makes a point of helping out at the scene of disasters, the Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation is the “welfare” wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which is in turn the front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the organisation accused of staging the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. All three organisations are proscribed by the UN’s terrorism sanction committee.

On Tuesday Hafiz Saeed, the leader of JuD and a man subject to a $10m US bounty, took to the airwaves to largely exonerate the TTP of their crimes. He said the school massacre been masterminded by India.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
yeah, I dont tend to read that thread. Once again, it's about your limited political agenda and it contributes nothing.

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Pakistan PM promises revenge. Interesting that Pakistan might finally be a bit over the Taliban, I mean really over.

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The Taliban just got a 100% approval rating from the NRA.

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And the U.S. still leads the world in school shootings.

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132 kids dead in Pakistan? Shitheads like auraptor freak out and start screaming "DO SOMETHING!!! ATTAAAAAACK!!!"

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I guess x-mass time of year is when the real losers, void of any friends or family, come out to post and try to make everyone else feel as miserable as they are ...

is that why you posted so MANY posts in this thread?

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I'm not sure how much this has to do with religion. It seems like it's politically motivated and happens to occur within a Muslim county. It would be like saying the hostilities in Ukraine was about Christianity.

Pakistan, enormously complicated political arena, has long played a double bluff game with the Taliban, which the assassination of Bin Laden clearly revealed. I do believe that the government has taken the ' they are nutcases, but they are useful nutcases' approach to date, while officially condemning them to keep in good with the US.

What a tortured country it is. So interesting, that since the partition India and Pakistan have taken such different courses, politically, socially and economically.

One of the best books I have ever read, actually a series of books ‘The Raj Quartet’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raj_Quartet set prior to and at the time of the partition, told from the English point of view (hence the title). Interestingly it was the Hindus that were more likely to be extremists in those days. I can recommend the tv series made in the 80’s. Still shapes up well. “The Jewell in the Crown”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewel_in_the_Crown_%28TV_series%29

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A long-awaited military campaign to destroy militant safe havens in a Taliban-dominated part of Pakistan's borderlands began , years after the US first demanded action.

The army said it had launched a "comprehensive operation against foreign and local terrorists who are hiding in sanctuaries in North Waziristan", the troubled tribal region that has served as a staging area for attacks across Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Military sources said as many as 30,000 troops could be involved in the operation to secure the border region, which the army believes must be completed before the end of Nato combat operations this year in Afghanistan.

An official statement said "Operation Zarb-e-Azb" had been launched "on the directions of the government", but the decision follows months of public controversy over the issue, with leading politicians arguing any attempt to seize control of the area would provoke a violent backlash by the Pakistani Taliban in the country's cities.

Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, had instead tried to negotiate a peace deal with militants, something most experts said had no chance of success given the record of militants breaking ceasefires.

Sharif's obstinacy in the face of army demands for North Waziristan to be dealt with before summer has exacerbated tensions between Pakistan's civilian and military leaderships, who have clashed over the treason trial of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

The military statement said the country could not afford to wait any longer. "Using North Waziristan as a base, these terrorists had waged a war against the state of Pakistan and had been disrupting our national life in all its dimensions, stunting our economic growth and causing enormous loss of life and property," it said.
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Pakistan's military had already ramped up pressure on militant groups in North Waziristan in recent weeks, launching air strikes and limited ground operations which it described as limited acts of retaliation against Taliban attacks.

The latest came early on Sunday when the army claimed fighter jets killed 80 terrorists, most of whom it said were Uzbeks involved in last week's lethal attack on Karachi's airport. Military sources said Abdul Rehman, a senior commander from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who is said to have masterminded the airport attack, was among the dead.

North Waziristan is part of a swath of forbidding, mountainous border territory that fell under Taliban control after militants fled there from Afghanistan following the US-led invasion of 2001.

It soon became a global hub for a plethora of terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban.

The presence of a large safe haven next to Afghanistan enraged bWashington and Kabul who complained the region was being used to hatch plots, train fighters and prepare suicide bombers who could cross the border to kill Afghan and Nato troops.

But Pakistan refused to act, even after the attempt by a Pakistani American terrorist to bomb New York's Times Square was traced back to the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan.

In 2011 the North Waziristan-based Haqqani Network, an Afghan militant group, launched a rocket attack on the US embassy in Kabul.

In response the White House expanded the use of missile strikes by unmanned drones to kill suspected militants, although the increase in strikes caused outrage in Pakistan.

Pakistan's refusal to act in North Waziristan reinforced suspicions that it continues to support and protect some militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban, in order to gain influence in Afghanistan, a country historically feared by Islamabad because of its refusal to drop claims to Pakistani territory and long-standing ties with arch enemy India.

The army argued it was taking action, methodically clawing back control of parts of the tribal north-west that had slipped into militant hands by launching major operations in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan.

Some observers remain sceptical despite Sunday's announcement. They argue the Haqqani Network and other militant groups regarded as useful allies are likely to be left untouched by the operation or will simply move into unsecured parts of western Afghanistan.

On Sunday the army insisted it would "eliminate these terrorists regardless of hue and colour".

Despite the dangers posed by North Waziristan, many analysts, including one senior western security official in Islamabad, warn an operation may only succeed in forcing dangerous militants into other parts of the country, including the already turbulent city of Karachi where the Pakistani Taliban has made dramatic inroads in recent years.

They say the police are simply not prepared to fight an urban insurgency.

Speaking on local television defence minister Khawaja Asif said "terrorists may carry out attacks, we have to be watchful". But he vowed that the operation would be carried through "to its logical conclusion".

"Any group that uses Pakistan's soil for terrorism will be eliminated, the operation will continue till the complete destruction of terrorism," he said.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

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Off your meds again, kookoo?
RapKnight posted 3 times in this thread, one to point out the derivative and copycat nature of the thread, other 2 were replies to queries or comment directed to him.
Or are you having difficulty counting with real numbers instead of your libtard maths?

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Has he been back? I did what I intended to do. Meanwhile, your silly frothing ... means and does nothing. The conversation continues without you.

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One of the most disturbing aspects of the revelations contained in WikiLeaks is the picture it paints of the behavior of Pakistan.

Pakistan, it seems, has been playing a 'double game,' assuring the US that it is doing what it can to tackle the fundamentalist militancy within its borders, taking incredible quantities of US aid in both cash and kind, but not only allowing militancy to flourish within its borders, but also, the leaks show, tolerating contact between top-level figures from its Intelligence Agency and commanders of the insurgency.

Given the allied perception that the fundamentalist militants pose a clear threat not just to the allied but to Pakistan too, one of the questions which is most often asked is: why is Pakistan doing this?

There are a number of reasons. Foremost amongst them is the Pakistani Intelligence Agency's institutional perception that the main threat to the country comes from India. This runs deep and colors most Pakistani analysts' view of the conflict on its Western border. It means, firstly, that they see the Taliban as an acceptable bulwark against Indian ambitions to dominate the region, whether real or perceived.

A second reason is that Pakistan does not believe that the allies in general, and the US in particular, are likely to keep significant military force in Afghanistan for the long-term. This means that they have an incentive to conduct relationships with all regional players in a way that is mindful of the day after US forces leave. Once the allies have left, the Taliban and the insurgency members will still be there, and Pakistan knows it will have to deal with them.

A third reason is that the ISI is independent of Pakistani politics in a way that any assumption of analogy between the CIA and US politics misrepresents. Not only does the Pakistani Intelligence Agency run massive businesses which dominate much of Pakistan's economy, but the number of them which file public accounts is in the single figures. Demands by the Pakistani Parliament for greater accountability have consistently been rejected. The government been able to get the ISI to even report to the Interior Ministry for much of its history. The workings of Pakistani politics simply have no institutional checks over the organization. Presidents come and go, but the ISI is a fixture of Pakistani national life. It has no incentive to answer to political control or for greater transparency.

The striking thing about these issues is that none are likely to change in the short term. Whatever the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, the perceptions and incentives which color Pakistan's behavior in the conflict are not going to change any time soon.

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