PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Dispatches) — Thousands of mourners on Friday attended the mass funeral of seven minority Shia teachers who were shot and killed by terrorists at a school in northwestern Pakistan, drawing nationwide condemnation, officials said.
The mourners also rallied against Thursday’s killings. The teachers were gunned down by takfiris terrorists who stormed a school in Kurram, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The slain teachers were members of Pakistan’s minority Shia community. The attack happened when the teachers were supervising exams at the school, and just hours after a separate attack killed another teacher – a Sunni Muslim - from the same school.
On Friday, Inayat Hussain Toori condemned the killings.
“We want justice and we don’t know who is behind it,” Toori said, adding that about 10,000 people rallied in Parachinar, a main in the Kurram district against the killings of teachers from their community.
“We request the government to do justice with us,” he said.
His comment came a day after Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif denounced the killings and ordered a probe to determine who was behind the twin attacks on teachers.
Earlier, the slain teacher killed in the first attack was also buried at a graveyard in Kurram.
Terrorists have stormed a school in Pakistan’s northwest, killing several teachers and gunning down another teacher from the school in a separate attack, according to officials.
In Kurram, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan, a group of gunmen on Thursday stormed a government school where students were taking exams.
Local police said they were gathering more information as they investigated the incident.
Pakistani President Arif Alvi has decried the deadly violence, saying, “The attack on teachers by the enemies of knowledge is condemnable.”