Scores Killed in Taliban Attack on School in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - In one of Pakistan's bloodiest attacks in recent years, scores of people were killed after a group of Taliban gunmen stormed a school in northwestern Pakistan, officials and rescue workers said on Tuesday. Hundreds of students remained trapped inside the compound as security forces exchanged fire with the gunmen, officials said.

The toll of dead and injured remained uncertain, but a regional official said that as many as 100 had been killed and 80 wounded in the attack, most of them students.

The siege started Tuesday morning around 10 a.m. when at least five to six heavily armed Taliban gunmen entered Army Public School and Degree College in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. According to initial reports, the gunmen opened fire on students and have taken dozens of them as hostages. Some students managed to escape the school compound, the local news media reported.

The gunmen entered the school after scaling a wall at the rear of the main school building. They opened fire and took dozens of students hostage in the main auditorium of the building, the news media reported.

Local television news networks broadcast images of panic-stricken students, wearing the school uniform of green sweaters and blazers, being evacuated from the school compound. The wounded have been taken to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, where a state of emergency has been declared.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has left the capital, Islamabad, for Peshawar, state-run news media reported, saying he would personally supervise the operation against the militants.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was in retaliation to the military's offensive against militant hideouts in the North Waziristan tribal region. Pakistani military carried out an offensive, 'Operation Zab-e-Azb,' in June and have claimed to have cleared 90 percent of the restive region that has long been a redoubt of local and foreign militants.

Pervez Khattak, the chief minister of the province, said that as many as 100 teenage students have been killed, while 83 were wounded in the attack. Mr. Khattak said the gunmen were wearing the uniforms of a paramilitary force and were armed with suicide vests.