At least nine people have been killed after Pakistani Taliban gunmen dressed in all-enveloping burqas stormed the campus of an agriculture university in northwestern Pakistan, hospital sources and police tell RFE/RL.
Police and army troops summoned to the scene on December 1 killed all of the attackers at the Directorate of Agriculture Institute in the city of Peshawar some two hours into the attack, the military's press service said.
An unnamed medical official confirmed to RFE/RL correspondents that the local hospital received the bodies of nine people.
Three or four attackers were among the dead, the correspondents reported.
The Pakistani Taliban -- Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) -- claimed responsibility for the attack. TTP spokesman Mohammad Khorasani said in a message that they had targeted a safe house of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
At least 16 people were wounded during the gunbattle between the attackers and security forces, including eight students, three army soldiers, a journalist, a policeman, and a security guard.
December 1 is a public holiday in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, commemorating Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
The gunmen arrived at the campus in an auto-rickshaw and disguised in the burqas worn by many women in the region, Peshawar police chief Tahir Khan said.
They shot and wounded a guard before entering the campus, he said.
In December 2014, TTP 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.
