Six killed in Pakistan school gun battle
At least five militants and one policeman were killed today during a gun battle at a high school in north-western Pakistan.
Police had challenged a group of suspected militants at the school where administrators wanted to “motivate” students for holy war, police said.
The shootings were at the privately-run Oxford Public School in Tank, a town about 60 miles from the Afghan border, said Javed Khan, a local police officer. It was unclear whether any of the students were hurt.
Khan said the militants told the administrators of the school to assemble the male students so that they could address them.
“They wanted to speak with the boys and motivate them for jihad,” Khan said in Tank.
He described the militants as “local Taliban,” a term commonly used to describe tribal militants in Pakistan’s border region, many of whom sympathise with the Taliban militia operating in neighbouring Afghanistan.
