Taliban Takes Responsibility for Attack on Bacha Khan University in Pakistan, Then Calls it “Un-Islamic”

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for an attack by multiple gunmen at a university in northwestern Pakistan that killed at least 20. Officials say all four of the attackers have been killed. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander first claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied the group was involved, calling the attack “un-Islamic”.

Islamists stormed a university in the volatile on Wednesday, a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began and that four gunmen were dead.

Numerous schools closed early around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors circulated of a possible attack. The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar. Taliban Islamic extremists attacked an army school in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar in Dec. 2014, killing 126 people. Of those dead, the overwhelming majority were between the ages of 12- to 16-years-old, or students grade 1 – 10.

The Peshawar army school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan’s resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan. The mastermind of the attack, a known Taliban operative, called it “justified” and helped to turn public opinion against the group in a country where nearly 100% say they believe Sharia (Islamic Law) should be the law of the land.

“We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after Wednesday’s attack.