Taliban gunmen storm Pakistan university, killing 21

All four attackers were also killed when security forces moved in to halt the bloodshed at the Bacha Khan university in the northwestern town of Charsadda.

A mobile phone photo shows Pakistani security personnel taking position outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, Show more

CHARSADDA // Twenty-one students and staff were killed and more than 30 injured on Wednesday when Taliban militants armed with grenades and Kalashnikovs attacked a university.

All four attackers were killed when security forces moved in to halt the bloodshed at the Bacha Khan university in the town of Charsadda in northwestern Pakistan.

The dead were 17 students, two gardeners, a caretaker and a chemistry professor who was killed while fighting the attackers and shielding the young men in his class.

Even before the attack, Prof Syed Husain was known as “The Protector” because of his care for his students. “He would always help the students and he was the one who knew all their secrets,” said Waqar Ali, a geology student.

Zahoor Ahmed, also a geology student, said that after the first shots were fired the professor had warned him not to leave the building.

“He was holding a pistol in his hand,” he said. “Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall.”

Another student was in class when he heard gunshots. “We saw three terrorists shouting, ‘Allah is great!’ and rushing towards the stairs of our department,” he said.

“One student jumped out of the classroom through the window. We never saw him get up.”

He also saw Prof Husain holding a pistol and firing at the attackers. “Then we saw him fall down, and as the terrorists entered the registrar’s office we ran away.”

Regional police chief Saeed Wazir said most of the victims were shot dead at a hostel for male students. The attackers had taken advantage of thick fog, he said, with visibility less than 10 metres.

A university security guard said the attackers had scaled a wall to enter the campus, and killed the caretaker in a school guesthouse before moving on to the hostel.

Inside the guesthouse, a television remote control lay in a pool of blood in front of the television, near an electric heater and a flask of tea. The walls were scarred by bullets.

The attack prompted widespread outrage in Pakistan. Candlelight vigils for the victims were held in nearby Peshawar and the southwestern city of Quetta, and there were protests in Karachi.

Prime minister Nawaz Sharif declared a national day of mourning on Thursday and ordered security agencies to hunt down those responsible.

Umar Mansoor, a commander of the Hakimullah Mehsud faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani, said they had carried out the attack.

Security forces believe he was behind a similar attack on an army-run school in Peshawar in 2014 in which more than 150 people died.

However, the TTP’s central leadership denied any involvement. “TTP strongly condemns today’s attack and disassociates itself completely from this un-Islamic attack,” spokesman Muhammad Khurasani said. The group would bring those behind it to justice, he said.

The denial appeared to indicate continued infighting in the Pakistani Taliban, as ISIL seeks to recruit its disaffected fighters.

A senior security official said the faces of the attackers were recognisable and their fingerprints had been taken. “We hope we will soon identify them.”

One had a mobile phone in his hand connected to Mansoor’s faction, the official said.

Two of the attackers were teenagers and the others were in their early twenties. They were armed with hand grenades and Kalashnikovs.

The attack, which Amnesty International said could be branded a war crime, was also condemned globally, including by India, the European Union and the United States.

It had chilling echoes of the Taliban assault on the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014, Pakistan’s deadliest attack. Most of the victims in that attack were children.

After a public outcry, the military intensified an offensive in the tribal areas where extremists had previously operated with impunity, and the government launched a crackdown.

Mansoor, the Hakimullah Mehsud commander, vowed in 2014 to continue his “revenge” for the military crackdown.

* Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Reuters