A relative of Mohammad Ali Khan wails after the 15-year-old was one of 132 children killed in the Taliban attack on an army school in Peshawar. Picture: Reuters Source: Supplied

A Pakistani student is wheeled into a hospital. Source: AP

It was a school of about 1000 students, boys and girls, from both army and civilian families, and being in a military secured zone in the strategic northwestern city, danger was probably the last thing on their minds. Then four gunmen in paramilitary uniforms burst in.

“Someone screamed at us to get down and hide below the desks,” Shahrukh said from his hospital bed yesterday. The gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar” before opening fire, he said. “I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me — this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches.”

Shahrukh felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs just below the knee. He decided to play dead: “I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream.

GALLERY: Taliban school siege

“The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. My body was shivering. I saw death so close.”

Shahrukh stayed still for some minutes. Then, his legs useless, he crawled into the next room. “I saw the dead body of our office assistant on fire,” he said.

“She was sitting on the chair with blood dripping from her body as she burned.”

The militants — from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an al-Qa’ida-affiliated terrorist group allied to, but operating independently from, the Taliban in Afghanistan — had indeed both shot and immolated children and adults in the school. By the time Pakistani troops ­secured the school eight hours later, the gunmen had slain 141 people: 132 children and nine staff members. A further 121 students and three staff were wounded. The death toll rose to 148 when another seven staff members died in hospital overnight.

World leaders condemned the massacre as “heinous”. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was “an act of horror and rank cowardice to attack defenceless children while they learn”.

Pakistan Army spokesman Asim Bajwa said: “Their sole purpose, it seems, was to kill those innocent kids. That’s what they did.”

General Bajwa said the killers, notwithstanding the supposed ­security zone, had simply walked into a graveyard at the back of the school complex, put a ladder over the fence, and launched into their spree of horror.

While the Pakistani military deployed special forces, armoured cars and aircraft, their progress in retaking control of the school complex was slowed by booby-trap bombs placed by the militants.

The seven attackers, wearing vests of explosives, all died in the assault: they either blew themselves up or were shot by soldiers.

The wounded — some still wearing their green school blazers — flooded into hospitals as terrified parents searched for their children. “My son was in uniform in the morning; he is in a casket now,” wailed one parent, Tahir Ali, as he came to the hospital to collect the body of his 14-year-old son, Abdullah.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced three days of national mourning, describing the attack as a “tragedy unleashed by savages”. He vowed to continue the largely successful military campaign against the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban’s allies in Afghanistan condemned the massacre.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani claimed responsibility, saying the attack was retribution for the military’s operation in nearby North Waziristan. “We targeted their kids so that they could know how it feels when they hit our kids,” Khurasani said.

AFP, AP, The Wall Street Journal