131 people killed in attack on army school in Pakistan: official.........

ISLAMABAD (Kyodo) --Gunmen and suicide bombers linked to Pakistani Taliban militants stormed an army school in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 131 people, mostly students, and injuring 80 others, the Pakistani military said.

Defense Ministry spokesman Major Gen. Asim Janjua said in a tweet Tuesday night that security forces had killed six attackers.

     All but two of the people killed by the attackers were students, Janjua said. One teacher and a security guard were also killed, he added.

     The attack occurred at the Army Public School and Intermediate College in Peshawar, a comprehensive education facility from primary school to college.

     Umar Kharasani, a spokesman for the militant group Tehreek Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack in telephone calls to local media, saying the group had sent "six, seven" gunmen.

     Militants wearing uniforms of paramilitary personnel stormed the school as students were receiving instructions on medical aid in the school hall, a student who was injured in the attack told GEO TV.

     According to GEO TV, the attackers chased students who fled into classrooms.

     "We heard firing from different classrooms," one student told the TV station.

     Three huge explosions were reportedly heard inside the school.

     The bodies of the victims were taken to Lady Reading Hospital and a military hospital in Peshawar.

     A spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital said children who managed to escape told hospital staff that they had seen "bodies still lying inside the school premises."

     Later in the day, authorities at the military hospital began handing over the bodies of the students to their parents who had thronged the hospital.

     A television reporter at the military hospital said the names of the students killed were called out on a loudspeaker for their parents to take possession of the bodies.

     The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa has announced three days of official mourning.

     Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif flew to Peshawar and declared that the attack would not weaken the government's resolve to fight terrorism.

     Sharif said Pakistani army operations in tribal areas in the northwest of the country would continue "until the elimination of terrorism in Pakistan."