International

Pakistani Taliban gunmen, using the disguise of all-enveloping burqas, stormed the campus of an agriculture university in Pakistan on Friday, killing at least nine and wounding 30, police said.

Police officials present at the site of the attack told Dawn news that four terrorists were killed.

The attackers were exchanging fire with security forces at the Directorate of Agriculture Institute of Peshawar, said Tahir Khan, chief of police in the northwestern city.

“Police and army commandos have cordoned off the campus,” Khan said. “A blast was also just heard from the campus.”

According to initial reports, 16 people were admitted to Khyber Teaching Hospital. Three of them succumbed to injuries.

The Pakistani Taliban quickly claimed the attack, saying in message from spokesman Mohammad Khorasani that they had targeted a safe house of the military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

The gunmen arrived at the school’s campus in a rickshaw and disguised in the burqas worn by many women in the region, Khan said.

They shot and wounded a guard before entering the campus, he said.

In December 2014, Pakistani Taliban gunmen killed 134 children at Peshawar’s Army Public School, one of the single deadliest attacks in the country’s history.

The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban insurgents who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by U.S.-backed military action in 2001.