Four shot in Quetta school attack

In this file photo, Pakistani security personnel stand guard at a state-run junior school after a grenade attack in Balochistan province capital Quetta on Nov. 7, 2009. (AFP)

• Those injured included students between the ages of nine and 12
• Terrorists had fired from beneath the school’s closed gates, police chief says

KARACHI: Four children were shot in a terrorist attack on a school in the outskirts of Quetta in Balochistan province on Wednesday, police said.
The injured students were immediately moved to the Quetta Civil Hospital where doctors said they were in a stable condition.
“Four students aged between 9 to 12 years have been brought to the hospital with bullet wounds. However, they are now stable after preliminary treatment,” Dr. Waseem Baig, spokesman of the hospital, told Arab News.
Dr. Baig added that the students — identified as Nasima, Gul Muhammad, Salman and Masood Azhar – were shot in the legs.
DIG Quetta Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that the children were students of the Danish Kada School, located in the Shabu Kali area of the city. “Since the gate of the school was closed, the terrorists fired from the space beneath the gate due to which the bullets hit the legs of the students,” Cheema told Arab News. “Luckily, there was no fatality in the incident from low-range firing,” he said.
He added that the motive behind the attack was yet to be ascertained as no specific threats had been issued to the school’s administration. No one has claimed responsibility of the attack, with authorities trying to zero in on the culprits, the police chief said.
“Anything regarding the motive of the terrorists can be said once the investigations are complete. The security of the schools has been tightened. At this stage nothing can be said whether the terrorists wanted to kill the students or just wanted to terrorize them,” Cheema said.
Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan, who sought a detailed report of the incident, directed the provincial police chief to arrest the culprits at the earliest, his spokesperson said.
The attack is a grim reminder of a more gruesome one that took place in 2014, when more than 134 students were killed in an attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16. The tragic incident prompted Pakistan’s civil and military leadership to devise a National Action Plan to curb militancy and terrorism.
It also follows closely on the heels of another incident where at least 12 schools were torched by militants in the Diamer district of Gilgit Baltistan in August this year.