2014 Peshawar school massacre

I was going through Quora today and stumbled upon a very tragic post and I felt I should write on it.

It was about the 2014 Peshawar School Massacre in Pakistan, the world's fourth deadliest school Massacre.
On 16th of December 2014, six gunmen, all of whom were foreign Nationals, conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the city of Peshawar.
They entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children, killing 149 persons including 132 school children between the ages of 8 and 18.

On the day of the attack, 1,099 students and staff were present in school. According to reports, the attack began at around 10:30am, when seven gun men entered the school after scaling the walls. They moved straight towards the assembly hall, where students were gathered for an assembly on first aid training, and opened fire frantically on the children. They didn't come to take hostages; rather, they came to kill as many children as they can, and it was reported that the children were forced to watch teachers, including the Principal Tahira Qazi as she was killed.
At the end of the day, the Army succeeded in rescuing 960 persons, of which 121 were injured. 149 people were killed, including 132 school staff members and children.

This picture was uploaded by Taha Munir Paracha (L), to his Facebook account, he captioned it "friends uplift the spirit". It looks like a normal picture, right? But there was more to it. The picture was meant to serve as a contrast to this:👇

Below are excerpts of what happened to 15 year old Baqir Jaffri, after they heard the first two shots.

"Then we heard a third shot, and our Principal, Madam Tahira Qazi, who was sitting in the front row, turned around and asked one of the teachers to lock the back door. I turned around to see Sir Javed (The teacher) walk up to the door, but before he could lock it, he was hit by two bullets that came through the glass. He fell down'' 

At first the gunman walking by the aisle where Baqir had taken cover, did not see him, but he noticed his head when he turned around. The bullet grazed his forehead.

"The Gunmen Probably thought that I was dead and walked on down the aisle, shooting boys and teachers. I saw him Shoot our teacher Ms Hafsa three times in the head"

His mother Fatima, who was a teacher at the school, didn't make it out. These were his elder brothers words when he tried to search for his mother.

"I waited at the gate. I was asking every student that was coming out if they had seen her. But nobody said yes. I rang her number a hundred times but there was no response. I called my father who said that my brother was safe in the hospital but there's no news on Mama". Then one of the boys told me he saw her running from the staff room to the Auditorium when the firing broke out. I knew then that she was running for my brother, who was in the auditorium, and that's where she fell, because her handbag and mobile phone were found near the Auditorium Stairs."

Similar horrifying stories emerged in the aftermath of the attack; students were lined up and asked which ones had parents in the military. Those who raised their hands were shot point blank.

An eighth-grader, Uzair Ali, tried to shield his friends by lying on top of them. His friends survived, but he didn't. He was shot thirteen times. Fourteen year old Fahad Hussain was gunned down while holding a door open for his classmates to escape.

This was one of the worst terrorist attacks in Pakistan's History and the massacre in which Taha Munir lost his friends, who were two of the 132 persons that were killed that day.

May 3, 2022.