Inside the auditorium of Peshawar's Army Public School which was attacked by Taliban gunmen (Associated Press photo)
Pakistanis mourned as mass funerals got underway Wednesday for 142 people, most of them children, killed the day before in a massacre by the Taliban at a military-run school in the country's troubled northwest.
(9 Gunmen, an 8-Hour Rampage and 132 Children Lost)Prayer vigils were held across the nation and in other schools, students spoke of their shock at the carnage in the city of Peshawar, where nine Taliban gunmen, explosives strapped to their bodies, scaled a back wall using a ladder to get into the Army Public School and College in the morning hours on Tuesday.
Students were gunned down and some of the female teachers were burned alive. The attack was the deadliest slaughter of innocents in the country and horrified a nation already weary of unending terrorist assaults. Army commandos fought the Taliban in a day-long battle until the school was cleared and the attackers dead.
The school was a scene of heart-wrenching devastation as media were allowed in for the first time Wednesday. Blood pooled on the floor and the stairs, amid broken window glass and door frames. Torn notebooks, pieces of clothing and children's shoes were scattered about. A pair of child's eyeglasses lay broken on the ground.
Pakistani soldier shows the media a burnt classroom at Peshawar school a day after a Taliban attack. (AFP)After the attackers entered the school, they made their way into the main auditorium where many students had gathered for an event, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa told reporters during the tour. The militants then made their way to the hall's stage and started shooting at random.
(Pakistani Student Who Survived Two Bullets Describes The Attack)As students tried to flee for the doors, they were gunned down. The military later recovered about 100 bodies from the auditorium alone, according to the spokesman.
"This is not a human act," Bajwa said. "This is a national tragedy."
The government declared a three-day mourning period, starting Wednesday. Overnight, the body of the school principal, Tahira Qazi, was found among the debris from the rampage. Her death raised further the earlier reported death toll of 141.
Qazi, who was inside her office when the militants made their way into the administration building 20 meters (yards) from the auditorium, had ran and locked herself into the bathroom but the attackers threw a grenade inside, through a vent, and killed her. Bajwa said.
Some of the funerals were held overnight, but most of the 132 children and 10 school staff members killed in the attack were to be buried Wednesday. Another 121 students and three staff members were wounded.
"They finished in minutes what I had lived my whole life for, my son," said labourer Akhtar Hussain, tears streaming down his face as he buried his 14-year-old, Fahad. He said he had worked for years in Dubai to earn a livelihood for his children.
"That innocent one is now gone in the grave, and I can't wait to join him, I can't live anymore," he said.
('He Didn't Want to go to School', Shares Grieving Father)The Taliban said the attack was revenge for a military offensive against their safe havens in the northwest, along the border with Afghanistan, which began in June.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged to step up the campaign that - along with US drone strikes - has targeted the militants.
(Pakistan to End Death Penalty Moratorium in Terror Cases)"We must not forget these scenes," Sharif said Wednesday at a top-level meeting in Peshawar. "The way they left bullet holes in the bodies of innocent kids, the way they tore apart their faces with bullets."