The Taliban splinter group that carried out a bloody attack against a university in Pakistan on January 20 has threatened further attacks targeting schools across the country.
A video statement was posted on January 22 in which Khalifa Umar Mansoor, head of a Tehrik-e Taliban (TTP) splinter group, said schools would be targeted because they are "nurseries" for people who challenge "Allah's law."
Twenty-one people were killed in the raid on the campus of Bacha Khan University in Charsadda Province.
Mansoor's group has also claimed responsibility for a 2014 attack on a school in Peshawar that left 150 people -- mostly children -- dead. It was the deadliest extremist attack in Pakistan's history.
"We will continue to attack schools, colleges, and universities across Pakistan as these are the foundations that produce apostates," Mansoor said. "We will target and demolish the foundations."
Following the 2014 Peshawar attack, teachers in Pakistan were given permission to carry arms to work. One of the teachers who was killed in the Bacha Khan attack reportedly fired on his attackers from his personal weapon.
The main TTP organization has disavowed the Bacha Khan University attack, calling it "un-Islamic."
