PESHAWAR: Headmaster Naveed Gul walked past the armed guard at the gate into his office. As primary school pupils studied their morning lessons outside, he reached beneath his warm woolly sweater, and pulled out a gun. "This is an M20 pistol," he said. "It's made in China and it works perfectly."
A debate over arming teachers has surged in Pakistan once more, days after assistant chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain opened fire on the Taliban gunmen who stormed the university campus where he worked.
Students told how the 33-year-old father-of-two died shielding them with a handgun during the attack that claimed 21 lives at Bacha Khan University (BKU) in Charsadda.
Teachers there had been given permission to carry firearms after the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan massacred at least 144 people, the majority of them children, at Peshawar's Army Public School (APS) in December 2014.