Death toll in Pakistan school attack passes 100: officials

A Taliban attack on an army-run school in Pakistan on Dec. 16 has left more than 100 people dead, most of them students, officials said.
     
Senior provincial minister Inayatullah told AFP at least 104 bodies had been taken to two hospitals in Peshawar, the northwestern city where the attack took place.
 
Witnesses described how a huge blast shook the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar and gunmen went from classroom to classroom, shooting children.
      
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack as retaliation for a major military offensive in the region, saying militants had been ordered to shoot older students.
      
The attack began around 10.30 am (0530 GMT) when a group of at least five insurgents, reportedly in military uniforms, entered the school.
      
Pakistan's military headquarters said a "rescue operation" was under way, with troops still exchanging fire with attackers more than three hours after the incident began.
      
A security official told AFP that hundreds of students and staff were in the school when the attack began, though according to the military the bulk of them have been evacuated.        

It is not clear how many are still in the school.
      
Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital received 26 bodies, spokesman Jamil Shah said, while a report from the city's Combined Military Hospital seen by AFP said they had 69 dead.
      
Provincial information minister Mushtaq Ghani said many of the dead were killed in a suicide blast.
      
Mudassar Abbas, a physics laboratory assistant at the school, said some students were celebrating at a party when the attack began.
      
"I saw six or seven...