CHARSADDA: Militants stormed the Bacha Khan University campus here on Wednesday morning, killing 20 people, including students, a faculty member and security guards, before being eliminated in a military-led operation.

Security officials said four militants scaled the rear boundary wall of the campus at around 8.30am and started shooting indiscriminately.

Police fired back immediately, but an early morning thick fog hampered the rescue operation, a senior government official said.

“It was foggy and visibility was extremely poor,” Peshawar Division Commis­sioner Dr Fakhr-i-Alam said.

The campus is located in a desolate rural village of Palosa, about 15 kilometres to the south-east of Charsadda town. It is surrounded by sprawling fields of sugarcane, orchards and poplar plantations.

Charsadda lies 30km to the north-east of Peshawar.

Security officials said guards posted at the main entrance responded to the gunfire and managed to pin the militants down. “Had the security guards not retaliated and managed to hold them back, the consequences would have been more devastating than what we have seen,” a security official said. “The guards fought bravely.”

The militants attacked an annexe and killed three people before racing towards a nearby dormitory for boys, two officials confirmed.

It was in the dormitory where the carnage took place, said security officials and rescue workers who helped retrieve the bodies.

In many respects, the shooting inside the dormitory was reminiscent of the ruthless killings in Peshawar’s Army Public School (APS) in Dec 2014.

“There were bodies all around, in every room,” an officer with a rescue team said. “Some had bullets in their heads while others in chests. Some were shot while they were still in bed, while others were shot while trying to flee their rooms. Bodies were lying astride in the doorway,” the officer said.

Some students tried to hide in cupboards, others tried to sneak beneath their beds. Some locked themselves in their rooms and turned off the lights, he said. “Laptops, some still switched on, were lying on the floor; one laptop was broken, apparently in the panic run. Mattresses were soaked in blood,” the officer said. “It was an APS repeat.”

Dormitory bears brunt of attack; TTP faction claims responsibility

Indeed, it was an APS repeat. The group which had masterminded and later accepted responsibility for the APS attack that left more than 140 dead, 132 of them students, also claimed responsibility for the Bacha Khan campus carnage.

Its leader, Khalifa Omar Mansoor alias Omar Naray, called journalists in Peshawar from his Afghan mobile phone number, accepting responsibility and warning of more attacks if the government did not stop “hanging of our facilitators”.

Four facilitators involved in the APS attack, including a mosque cleric who had provided shelter to the group of suicide bombers, were hanged in Kohat Jail on Dec 29 after a trial in a military court.

Khalifa Mansoor, a former activist of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, affiliated with the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, who heads his own chapter of the militant organisation, was believed to be operating from his sanctuary in Naziyan district of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangrahar province, a senior intelligence official said.

Officials said that some students who had guns with them also fired at the approaching militants at the campus. Their action might have given precious time to police and other forces to reach the spot and corner the attackers.

Some unconfirmed reports suggest that one of the attackers might have been killed by the students holed up inside the two-storey dormitory. The three other attackers, holed up in a corner on the first floor, were killed when the army fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them, sources said.

But the military said all four attackers were killed by army sharpshooters.

The attackers were wearing joggers and shabbily dressed, witnesses said. None of them was carrying suicide vests.

Two mobile phones were recovered from their possession and intelligence officials said they were being examined for clues to their handlers and facilitators.

According to officials, 20 people were killed, including 14 students, a faculty member, two security guards, a librarian and a driver. Twenty-four others were injured and taken to hospitals in Charsadda and Peshawar.

The operation lasted nearly three hours. Rescue 1122 personnel were the first to reach the place, followed by police.

The military’s Quick Reaction Force, dispatched from Peshawar, reached the place in 45 minutes.

It was the same brigade which had carried out the operation against militants in APS.

Helped by air surveillance, military commandoes took upon the militants in the dormitory and eventually eliminated them, a security official said.

The attack coincided with the death anniversary of the late freedom fighter and Khudai Khidmatgar leader, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan. University officials said a poetry session (Mushaira) was being held to pay homage to the red shirt leader.

Dr Shakil Ahmed, the university’s director of administration, told Dawn that one student panicked, jumped down from the building and got his leg and arms broken. Some female students and staff members fainted, but were rescued without any harm.

About 3,000 students study at the campus, but most of them were on leave following examinations. At present about 200 students live in boys’ hostel. About 400 girls also study at the campus.

Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif visited the campus after the attack and went into a huddle to discuss the security situation with his commanders and intelligence officials in Peshawar.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, along with three of his senior ministers and advisers, the speaker of the provincial assembly and members of the treasury and opposition benches, left for Scotland on a 12-day visit, drawing criticism for his absence and prompting his party’s chief Imran Khan to summon him back to Peshawar.

An official said that Mr Khattak, who was in Dubai, flew back to the country to take stock of the situation. There was no word about his entourage.

Talking to reporters at the scene, Imran Khan said the prompt response had saved precious lives. He said the university’s security guards had done a good job to minimise the loss of lives and despite dense fog, police and army personnel made to the site quickly.

“It could have been a much bigger tragedy,” the PTI chief said, adding that local people had put up resistance.

He said that there were about 64,000 educational institutions in the province and police could not protect all.

The government announced three days of mourning.

The Awami National Party, which counts Charsadda as its stronghold, declared 10 days of mourning.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2016