PESHAWAR, Pakistan—Pakistan closed schools across the country on Wednesday on the anniversary of last year’s Taliban attack that killed over 150 people, 144 of them schoolchildren, officials said.
The closure was part a day of national mourning and a precaution against militant attacks tied to the anniversary, said government spokesman Mushtaq Ghani.
Pakistan’s top civilian and military leadership attended a ceremony in the northwestern city of Peshawar to award medals to the victims’ families.
In his address, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resolved to weed out militant extremism, promising that: “We will take revenge for every drop of our children’s sacred blood.”
In the wake of the attack, Pakistan stepped up its campaign against Islamic extremists, lifting a moratorium on the death penalty and trying alleged militant extremists in military courts. The Pakistani army claims to having killed 3,400 Islamic extremists in a major military push in the North Waziristan tribal region along the Afghan border, which has long served as a safe haven for local and al-Qaida linked foreign militants. The operation was launched in June 2014, six months before a team of six or seven Taliban militants stormed the army-run school in Peshawar; the attackers all either blew themselves up or were shot and killed by the army.
The main Taliban umbrella group led by Maulvi Fazlullah, who has been based in neighboring Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for the North Waziristan campaign.
