RUMORS OF ATTACK
Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other.
Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began.
“Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began,” Khan said.
Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors circulated of a possible attack.
The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar.
Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards.
The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan’s resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan.
“We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after Wednesday’s attack.
(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud. Writing by Tommy Wilkes and Kay Johnson; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Article Appeared @http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-attacks-university-idUSKCN0UY0C4