Pakistan's agony born of deep conflicts

By The Canberra Times
Updated April 23 2018 - 11:25pm, first published December 17 2014 - 6:12pm

Pakistan has had a long and bloody acquaintance with terrorism since partition in 1947, but Tuesday's assault on a crowded school in Peshawar set a new low water mark in pre-mediated violence intended to shock and intimidate. In an attack that bore similarities to the Beslan school massacre in North Ossetia in 2004, nine armed gunmen stormed the Peshawar Army public school spraying gunfire and hurling grenades at students, teachers and staff members. The militants were in turn attacked by members of the Pakistan army's elite Special Services Group. The assault began at 10am on Tuesday (not long after the Martin Place siege had ended in Sydney), and by the time it had ended eight hours later, 132 pupils and nine staff members had died. The shock and horror evoked by the massacre of the children (some of them as young as five) was summed up as well as anyone by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who commented that "The scale of what has happened … I think simply defies belief. It is a dark, dark day for humanity." A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, which has itself made extensive use of suicide attacks, posted a message on social media criticising the attack as un-Islamic, and expressing sympathy with the bereaved families in Peshawar.

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