Parents escort their children outside a school attacked by the Taliban in Peshawar. (Associated Press photo)
More than 100 children have been killed in a horrific attack by the Taliban on an army-run school in Peshawar in North West Pakistan.
(Peshawar school attack: Track LIVE updates)"The combat operation is over, the security personnel are carrying out clearance operation and hopefully they will clear the building in a while," police official Abdullah Khan told news agency AFP at 7 pm IST. "Dead bodies of six terrorists have been found in the building." (
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Senior police official Shafqat Malik confirmed the combat phase of the response was over, while chief army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said on Twitter that the operation was "closing up".
Taliban gunmen stormed the school in the morning in the worst attack to hit the country in years. Nearly 130 people are dead, said officials.
The overwhelming majority of the victims were students at the army public school, which has children and teenagers in grades 1-10. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the assault and rushed to Peshawar to show his support for the victims.
The attack began in the morning hours, with about half a dozen gunmen entering the school - and shooting at random, said police officer Javed Khan. Army commandos quickly arrived at the scene and started exchanging fire with the gunmen, he said. Students wearing their green school uniforms could be seen on Pakistani television, fleeing the area.
One of the wounded students, Abdullah Jamal, who was shot in the leg, said nobody knew what was going on in the first few seconds.
"Then I saw children falling down who were crying and screaming. I also fell down. I learned later that I have got a bullet," he said, speaking from his hospital bed.
Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to media, saying that six suicide bombers had carried out the attack in revenge for the killings of Taliban members at the hands of Pakistani authorities.
The Pakistani military launched the military operation in the nearby North Waziristan tribal area in June, vowing that it would go after all militant groups that had been operating in the region.
Tuesday's attack calls into question whether the militants have been crippled by the military or will be able to regroup.