Pakistani officials say Taliban gunmen have stormed a military school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 80 students and wounding many more. At least one security officer was also killed in the initial siege, according to a hospital official.
CBS News' Maria Usman reports that the school was full when the gunmen took it over, meaning hundreds of students could be trapped inside. The Pakistani military said in a statement, however, that a rescue operation was underway and that most of the students and the staff had been evacuated.
According to a senior government official the death toll stood at 87, with many more injured, and it was believed that the school's principal and some other staff were being held hostage.
Police officer Javed Khan said the gunmen entered the school on Tuesday morning. He said army commandos quickly arrived at the scene and exchanged fire with the gunmen.Pakistani television showed soldiers surrounding the area and pushing people back.
Jamil Shah, a spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital, says two teenage students died in the incident and 25 others were wounded.
Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to media.
"I can confirm that there were at least six gunmen who stormed the school," a Pakistani intelligence official in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari. "They were all Taliban militants."
Schoolchildren cross a road as they move away from a military run school under attack by Taliban gunmen in Peshawar, Dec. 16, 2014.
REUTERS
Bokhari said the militants appeared to have targeted a portion of the school where children between the ages of 13 and 15 were taking exams. The school has students in grades 1 to 10. The school is located on the edge of a military zone in Peshawar, but the bulk of the students are civilian.
A teaching assistant who escaped the school said on local television that militants were going from room to room and "beating children." According to multiple reports, the Taliban militants had been ordered to shoot older students but allow the younger ones to go free.
Peshawar has been the target of frequent militant attacks in the past, and Tuesday's siege was a powerful reminder of the Pakistani Taliban's threats for retaliation after the central government decided -- under intense pressure from Washington -- to attack the group's sanctuaries in the country's North Waziristan region, along the Afghan border, in June this year.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/taliban-gunmen-storm-pakistan-military-school-peshawar-take-hostages/
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