Pakistan Charsadda: Deadly assault on university

Security forces have ended a gun and bomb attack on a university in north-west Pakistan in which 19 people were killed and 17 injured.

Four suspected attackers also died in a battle that lasted nearly three hours at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda.

There are conflicting reports about whether Pakistan Taliban militants carried out the assault.

The group killed 130 students at a school in the city of Peshawar, 50km (30 miles) from Charsadda, in 2014.

About 3,000 students are enrolled at Bacha Khan but hundreds of visitors were also expected on Wednesday for a poetry event.

Attack as it happened

Who are the Taliban?

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement, quoted by Reuters news agency: "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland."

It could have been much worse — M Ilyas Khan, BBC News, Islamabad
There have been conflicting claims about who could be involved in the attack, a sign of the kaleidoscopic mix of militant networks evolving along the Pakistan-Afghan border region in the north.

The attack comes amid a sudden spike in militant violence in Pakistan, after a year of relative peace and quiet largely attributed to a 2014 military operation against militant sanctuaries in Waziristan. Questions are now being raised over whether that operation really destroyed the ability of militants to regroup and strike at will.

The attack is reminiscent of the December 2014 attack on a school in Peshawar in which more than 150 people, mostly schoolboys, were killed. But damage to life and property this time has been much less, mainly due to swift action by the local police, but also because of the fact that the university had its own team of more than 50 trained security guards on duty who first confronted the attackers.

A dense fog that reduced visibility to less than 10m may also have been a factor, as one police officer explained, because it put the attackers at a disadvantage against the university guards who knew the premises better.

Lecturer shot

"The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistani army spokesman Gen Asim Bajwa told Reuters news agency. "Four gunmen have been killed."

The attackers struck at around 09:30 local time (04:30 GMT), apparently climbing over a back wall under cover of the thick winter fog.

Intense gunfire and explosions were heard as security guards fought the attackers.
"I personally heard two explosions," an unidentified eyewitness told Pakistan's Geo TV.

"We don't know if they were suicide bombers or grenades. I personally saw two explosions and smoke was rising."

Students and staff ran to find cover in toilets and examination halls.

One student told television reporters he was in class when he heard gunshots: "We saw three terrorists shouting, 'God is great!' and rushing towards the stairs of our department.

"One student jumped out of the classroom through the window. We never saw him get up."

Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said his chemistry lecturer, Syed Hamid Husain, had warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired.

"He was holding a pistol in his hand," he was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.
"Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall."

The victims — mostly male students — were shot in the head or chest. Seventeen people were injured. At least one security guard also died.

Images from inside the university show a pool of blood on the floor of a dormitory and the charred corpses of two alleged militants lying on a staircase.

Grieving relatives gathered at a hospital as the bodies of victims were placed in coffins.

Deadliest recent attacks in Pakistan

20 January 2016: Militants kill at least 19 people in attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, near Peshawar

13 December 2015: Bomb blast kills 24 people at a clothes market in the Kurram tribal region

18 September 2015: Taliban militants kill 29 people in an attack on an air force base in Peshawar

13 May 2015: Gun attack on a bus carrying Ismaili Shia Muslims in Karachi leaves at least 45 people dead

13 February 2015: Militants attack a Shia mosque in Peshawar with guns and grenades. At least 20 people killed

30 January 2015: Bomb blast at a Shia Mosque in Shikarpur district, Sindh province, kills at least 40 people

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A senior Taliban commander, Umar Mansoor, told media that the attack was in response to a military offensive against militant strongholds. He said four suicide attackers had carried out the attack.

However, the group's main spokesman, Mohammad Khurasani, later told the BBC the Taliban had not been involved. He condemned the attack as "un-Islamic".

An assistant professor at the university, Dr Shakoor, told the BBC he had turned back from the main gate of the campus after being told it was under attack.

Most of the students and members of the faculty would probably still not have arrived when the attack started, he said.

He saw people coming out through the main gate, apparently because the attackers had entered the campus from the back.

The university is located in an open area some distance east of Charsadda town, surrounded by open agricultural fields, and is therefore a soft target, the BBC's Ilyas Khan reports.

Just days ago, some schools in Peshawar were closed by the authorities amid reports that militants were planning an attack.