Attackers storm Pakistani college

Peshawar : Pakistani Taliban gunmen disguised in all-enveloping burqas stormed the campus of an agricultural college in Pakistan yesterday, killing at least nine people and wounding 35, police and hospital officials said.

Police and army troops summoned to the scene killed all of the attackers at the Agriculture Training Institute in the northwestern city of Peshawar about two hours into the attack, the military’s press wing said.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying in a message from spokesman Mohammad Khorasani that they had targeted a safe house of the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

The gunmen arrived at the campus in an auto-rickshaw, disguised in the burqas worn by many women in the region, Peshawar police chief Tahir Khan said.

They shot and wounded a guard before entering the campus, he said.

A wounded student, Ahteshan ul-Haq, told Reuters the university hostel usually houses nearly 400 students, but most had gone home for a long holiday weekend and only about 120 students remained.

“We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. I got up and within seconds everybody was running and shouting ‘the Taliban have attacked’,” he said.

The Pakistani Taliban later released a video showing the attack, recorded with what appeared to be a body-mounted camera. In it, one of the gunmen raced into a building shouting “Allahu Akbar!” and firing his weapon as he went room to room searching for students.

The militants also issued photos of the attackers, who they said were from nearby Swat Valley, singing with the movement’s fugitive leader, Mullah Fazlullah, before their mission.

Shehzad Akbar, medical director of Hayatabad Medical Complex, said six people died of their wounds and 18 were being treated. Another three people died at Khyber Teaching Hospital and 17 wounded were there, director Nekdad Afridi said.