More gruesome details of the shocking massacre carried out by 7 Taliban gunmen stormed the Army Public School in Pakistan .The Jihadists claimed 141 lives including 132 children during a three-hour orgy of bloodshed, before they ended up being killed .There are reports its also in revenge for Malala Yousafzai winning the Nobel Peace Prize
According to witness accounts compiled by Mailonline, a teacher is believed to have been burned alive while her pupils were forced to watch her die an awful, agonising death..The victim - allegedly singled out because she was married to a senior army officer - was said to be the wife of army soldier Subedar Abbass.Harrowing eyewitness accounts revealed how students were forced to watch as bodies were burned beyond recognition.
Other survivors told how they played dead while insurgents scoured the school looking for children to shoot, before open fire indiscriminately - sometimes with smiles on their faces.
It is believed the killers may have had inside information, apparently knowing that 150 pupils were at their mercy watching a first aid demonstration in the main hall. The horror at school came on the day when the military was scheduled to provide a display of first-aid and drills. The wives of a brigadier and a major were searched out and murdered.
One suicide bomber is believed to have blown himself up in a room full of 60 children .Most of their victims, aged from six to 18, were shot in the head and chest. Corpses choked the army school’s corridors. One boy said he was the sole survivor of a group of ten friends who tried to find a hiding place but were mown down. A 10-year-old boy caught up in the massacre has spoken of his dramatic escape from Taliban gunmen as bullets whizzed past his head - having seen two of his classmates shot dead in front of him.
Irfan Shah told how he was sitting in his class at 10:30 when he heard the sound of firing outside.
Shah told MailOnline:
'It was our social studies period. Our teacher first told us that some kind of drill was going on and that we do not need to worry. It was very intense firing. Then the sound came closer. Then we heard cries. One of our friends open the window of the class.
'He started weeping as there were several school fellows lying on the ground outside the class
Everybody was in panic. Two of our class fellows ran outside class in panic. They were shot in front of us.'
He said that the teacher asked the children, part of a class of 33, to run towards the back gate of the school.He continued:
'The back gate is around 200 meters from our class room. I tightly held the hand of my friend Daniyal and we both ran towards the back gate. We were weeping. I felt bullets passing by my head twice. It was so terrible.
'We reached back gate in a minute. As we stepped outside the gate, we started weeping again very loudly. An aunt from a nearby house heard us and took us inside her house. We were shivering. She gave us water and comforted us. We stayed there for 15 minutes.
'Our van always parked a few hundred meters away from the school. We then went to our van. The van driver told us that our school fellows who have been murdered in the attack are martyrs and they would go to jannah (paradise).
'We have been told that two of our class fellows died in the attack. They both were shot in front of all of us.'
One 15-year-old student Shahrukh Khan, who was shot in both legs, told how he hid under a bench and played dead to avoid being killed by the insurgents.
Speaking from his bed in the trauma ward of the city's Lady Reading Hospital, the teenager told how he even shoved a tie in his mouth to stop him from screaming out in fear of the gunmen.
The young boy described how, after they burst in shouting 'Allah-o-Akbar' - which means 'God is greatest' - one of them shouted: 'There are so many children beneath the benches, go and get them'.
He said: 'I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches.'
Khan said he felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs just below the knee.He decided to play dead, adding:
'I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn't scream.The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again.My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me -- I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.
Khan told how he tried to get up, but fell because of his injuries. Desperate to escape to safety, he crawled into the next room, where he the body of the school's office assistant body on fire.
He said:
'She was sitting on the chair with blood dripping from her body as she burned.'
Khan, who said he also saw the body of a soldier who worked at the school, then crawled behind a door to hide, where he lost consciousness.He added:
'One of my teachers was crying, she was shot in the hand and she was crying in pain.One terrorist then walked up to her and started shooting her until she stopped making any sound. All around me my friends were lying injured and dead.'
Mohammad Muneeb told how his 14-year-old brother Muhammad Shaheer was shot dead in front of him as 200 children sat in an auditorium, getting training in first aid.
'Two guards were there, sitting on the desk at the front, when four people wearing black uniform ran in. They just started firing. First they targeted the brigadier and his guards, the two guards were killed.
'The brigadier managed to get away safely and they started firing at the students.
'I saw my own brother die, he was shot in the throat.'
Zakir Ahmad, who runs an electronics store in Peshawar, has lost his 16-year-old Abdullah and is frantically searching for 12-year-old Hassnain, who is still missing hours after the atrocity.
Crying and barely able to speak, he told MailOnline:
'When I heard there was an attack I ran to the school. I heard firing. I sent my cousins and staff to search the hospitals while I stayed praying at school. Then after an hour I got the call, he just said Abdullah is dead. I have found him in the hospital. I still don't know anything about my boy Hasnain.
'This is a terrible injustice. We are innocent people, my boys are innocents who do not carry guns and bombs. The only justice for me is to find these people who are supporting extremists and hang them in rows. Make them die for what they did.
'My son was such a good boy. Obedient, bright. When he was going to school this morning he came into my room and kissed me.
The Taliban said they sent the gunmen into the building as revenge for a Pakistan military crackdown on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and allies in North Waziristan tribal heartlands.
The TTP said many of their family members had been killed in the campaign, and said the attack on the school was in revenge for those deaths.Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. '
'We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,' We want them to feel the pain.'
The attack started with seven gunmen entering the 500-pupil school - which has students aged 10 to 18 - in the early hours.
The jihadists shot their way into the building and went from classroom to classroom, shooting at random and picking off students one by one.
Culled from Mailonline
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