At least 7 dead, 70 injured in blast at school in Pakistan
Islamabad, Oct 27 (efe-epa).- At least seven people were killed and 70 others wounded on Tuesday in a blast at a religious school in the city of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, according to official sources.
“There was Quran lesson going on when the blast occurred. The explosives were hidden inside a bag which somebody brought in the seminary,” Peshawar police spokesperson Faiz Khan told EFE.
He added that at least seven people have died, while Health Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province – where Peshawar is located – tweeted that at least 70 others have been injured in the early morning explosion in the city’s Dir neighborhood.
Peshawar’s police superintendent Waqar Azeem told EFE that the seven dead, in all likelihood, were all minors.
“All the seven killed were students. At the seminary, the children are between the ages of 5 and 15. I can’t exactly tell their ages,” said Azeem.
Peshawar witnessed a massacre at an Army-run school in the city, in which 135 people, including 25 children, were killed in December 2014.
A day after the Peshawar school attack, then prime minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism-related cases and extended it to other crimes in March 2015.
In recent years, terrorism has reduced significantly in the Asian country, however, in the last few months, there has been an uptick in violence.
Earlier this month, 14 members of the security forces were killed in an attack on an escort convoy of the state-owned Oil and Gas Development Company Limited in the insecure province of Balochistan in the southwest of the country.
In August, six people were killed and 24 injured in a bombing at a market in the town of Chaman in the same province. EFE-EPA
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