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2014 Peshawar school attack

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2014 Peshawar school attack

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Also known as 2014 Peshawar school massacre

terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the Pakistani city of Peshawar

Key facts

Date
16 December 2014 ; 11 years ago ( 2014-12-16 ) , 10:30 PKT – 19:56 PKT (UTC+05:00)
Target
Students and staff at Army Public School Peshawar
Attack type
Suicide bombing Murder-suicide , mass shooting , hostage-taking , school shooting
Deaths
155 (including the six perpetrators)
Perpetrators
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan
Defenders
Pakistan Army Special Services Group
Motive
Retaliation against National Action Plan Operation Zarb-e-Azb

via Wikipedia infobox

~25 min read

Encyclopedic overview

On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The terrorists, all of whom were foreign nationals, comprising one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans, entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children, killing 149 people including 132 schoolchildren ranging between eight and eighteen years of age, making it the world's eighth deadliest school massacre. Pakistan launched a rescue operation undertaken by the Pakistan Army's Special Services Group (SSG) special forces, who killed all six terrorists and rescued 960 people. In the long term, the national outrage against the targeted killing of schoolchildren led to Pakistan establishing the National Action Plan to crack down on terrorism.

According to various news agencies and commentators, the nature and preparation of the attack was very similar to that of the Beslan school hostage crisis that occurred in the North Ossetia–Alania region of the Russian Federation in 2004.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “2014 Peshawar school attack” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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