They were shot till they fell silent: A Peshawar survivor's horrifying account

Peshawar, Dec 17: No, we did not hear the gunfire, but we can still feel the pain. Afterall, this time, its none other than kids that are affected, who have nothing to do with the raging wars.

While the world condemns the attacks, there are susrvivors whose tears do not stop streaming. With a scarred psyche, a young boy narrated the chain of events in the shool shootout.

It was a usual day at school when the students were busy ruffling through there homeworks and teachers with their lectures and notes. The silence was shattered by a rattling of doors, gunfire, smoke and screams. A batallion of crazed militants stormed in each of the rooms and started shooting randomly at adults and students.

With 132 children dead, some of them on the spot during the first round of shootings, the Taliban claims that this was a revenge for the killings of their own relatives by the Pakistani army.

Some, however, as survivors claim, died during gunfight between the Pakistani army who stormed in the school building in retaliation.

The terrorists knew what they were doing

The assault began after 11:45 am, the target was particularly the children of the army personnel. However, the school, located at the edge of the country's turbulent tribal belt, also enrols civilian wards.

A 15 year old boy, who survived dodging behind a bench but with bullet shots in both the legs narrated how he survived the killing of his teacher in front of his eyes. "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," he said.

Suicide bombers ripped through the premises

There were reportedly three suicide bombers, who blew themselves up, leading to several more deaths-all between the age of 10 and 20 years.

A Reuters Correspondent narrates the horror at the local Combined Military Hospital where the corridors were lined with the charred bodies of school kids in their uniforms.

Meanwhile, in a heart-wrenching incident, a family was handed over the wrong body as the children were beyond recognition due to the explosions.

Another student described the terrorists as wearing white clothes and clack jackets when they sprayed bullets. "They opened fire at the students and then went out. The army doctor and soldiers managed to escape and we locked the doors from inside," he said. "But very soon they came, broke the doors and entered and again started firing."

Each of the students testified that the gunmen communicated with them in what they recognised as either Farsi or Arabic, which implies Taliban's network of hundreds of foreign fighters holed up hundreds of foreign fighters in the Pakistan-Afghan border.

OneIndia News