Pakistan buries victims of school massacre

Associated Press

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN

As they buried their children Wednesday, the families spoke of their dreams. One boy had just gotten high marks on his midterm and hoped to become a pilot. A 13-year-old wanted to become a doctor. Another kid just loved playing video games with his cousins.

At cemeteries across the Pakistani city of Peshawar, families lowered the rough wooden coffins of young boys and their teachers into the cold ground and gathered under funeral tents or at home, trying to comprehend the militant attack a day earlier on a school that killed 148 people, almost all of them young students.

The Pakistani government and military vowed a stepped up campaign aimed at rooting out militant strongholds in the country’s tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan. In a sign of how deeply the attack shook Pakistan, the head of the military flew to Kabul and sought help from the Afghan government — which with Islamabad has long had a tense relationship — against militant commanders behind the attack, a Pakistani military official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The Pakistani Taliban, which has waged an insurrection against the government for a decade, claimed responsibility. The group says it was seeking revenge for a military assault launched in June in North Waziristan.