SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
The following accounts may be disturbing for some readers; The Express Tribune advises reader discretion.
Aamir Ali, a second-year engineering student, lost 10 of his comrades within a blink of the eye during the siege at the Army Public School.
Here are some of the devastating witness accounts to have come out of the Peshawar attack:
“I was sitting in the corridor with 10 of my classmates when we heard firing. We immediately ran towards the classroom to hide there but the militants chased us down and found us. They were dressed in shalwar kameez and the only thing they told us is: ‘read the kalma’,” said Ali, remorsefully adding that he was the only one of his 10 friends that survived the attack.
Witnesses described how gunmen went from classroom to classroom, shooting children, after a huge blast shook the Army Public School, while some described police struggling to hold back distraught parents trying to break past a cordon and get to the school when three loud explosions went off.
Ninth grader Kashan, son of Zaheerudin, told our correspondent, “We were sitting in the hall and a colonel was giving a lecture when we heard firing from the back.”
Kashan said, “The sound of the firing kept moving closer when suddenly the door behind us was kicked down and two people started firing indiscriminately.”
The ninth-grader said chaos ensued and the last thing he remembers is children and people falling to the ground. Kashan escaped but with injuries on his feet.
Ahsan Mukhtar, a second-year intermediate student, said his teacher made the entire classroom crouch and move towards the end of the classroom as the firing started. “After an hour, when the firing relatively calmed down, the army came and rescued us,” Mukhtar added.
A grandmother told The Express Tribune how she was called by the school’s principal to pick up her grandchildren when the attack happened. “The principal told us that 20 students had been injured and we should come get our children as soon as possible,” she said. “I hung up before the principal could finish talking.”
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