TALIBAN gunmen stormed a school in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar yesterday, killing at least 132 people, officials said, in the worst attack to hit the country in over a year.

    The overwhelming majority of the victims were students at the army public school, which has children and teenagers in grades 1-10.

    The horrific violence, carried out by a relatively small number of militants from the Tehreek-e-Taliban group, a Pakistani militant group trying to overthrow the government, also sent dozens of wounded flooding into local hospitals as terrified parents searched for their children.

    The attack began in the morning hours, with about half a dozen gunmen entering the school — and shooting at random, said police officer Javed Khan. Army commandos quickly arrived at the scene and exchanged fire with the gunmen, he said.

    Pervez Khattak, chief minister of the province where Peshawar is located, said fighting was still underway in some parts of the school and that roughly more than 245 students were wounded. Hospital officials earlier said at least one of the fatalities was a teacher and that one security official was also among the dead, according to him.

    It wasn’t clear how many students and staff were still inside the facility. A student who escaped and a police official on the scene earlier said at one point about 200 students were being held hostage. Both declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about the situation.

    The school is located on the edge of a military cantonment in Peshawar, but the bulk of the students are civilian. There was conflicting information about how many attackers carried out the violence, but it was a relatively small number.

    Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to media, saying that six suicide bombers had carried out the attack in revenge for the killings of Taliban members at the hands of Pakistani authorities. But the chief minister said there were eight attackers, dressed in military uniforms. Two were killed by security forces and one blew himself up, Khattak said. The rest were still fighting.(SD-Agencies)