141 killed and 182 injured in Taliban attack on military school in Pakistan

Militants from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked a school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say.

Pakistani officials say the attack is now over, with all of the attackers killed. A total of seven militants took part, according to the army.

Scores of survivors are being treated in hospitals as frantic parents search for news of their children.

The attack is the deadliest ever by the Taliban in Pakistan.

There has been chaos outside hospital units to which casualties were taken, the BBC's Shaimaa Khalil reports from Peshawar.

Bodies have been carried out of hospitals in coffins, escorted by crowds of mourners, some of them visibly distraught.
A Taliban spokesman told BBC Urdu that the school, which is run by the army, had been targeted in response to army operations.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to have died in a recent military offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area.

US President Barack Obama condemned the "horrific attack (...) in the strongest possible terms"

. This brutal attack may well be a watershed for a country long accused by the world of treating terrorists as strategic assets.

Pakistan's policy-makers struggling to come to grips with various shades of militants have often cited a "lack of consensus" and "large pockets of sympathy" for religious militants as a major stumbling-block.

That is probably why, when army chief Gen Raheel Sharif launched what he called an indiscriminate operation earlier in the year against militant groups in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, the political response was lukewarm at best.

We will get them, was his message, be they Pakistani Taliban, Punjabi Taliban, al-Qaeda and affiliates, or most importantly, the dreaded Haqqani network. But the country's political leadership chose to remain largely silent. This is very likely to change now.

Military spokesman Asim Bajwa told reporters in Peshawar that 132 children and nine members of staff had been killed.

All seven of the attackers wore suicide bomb vests, he said. Scores of people were also injured.

It appears the militants scaled walls to get into the school and set off a bomb at the start of the assault.

Children who escaped say the militants then went from one classroom to another, shooting indiscriminately.

One boy told reporters he had been with a group of 10 friends who tried to run away and hide. He was the only one to survive.

Others described seeing pupils lying dead in the corridors. One local woman said her friend's daughter had escaped because her clothing was covered in blood from those around her and she had lain pretending to be dead