PM Nawaz chairs high-level meeting to discuss NAP, Charsadda attack probe
Army Chief General Raheel Sharif and Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan are present in the meeting.
ISLAMABAD (Web Desk / AP) – Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is chairing a high-level meeting in Islamabad to review the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism and probe into attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Dunya News reported.
Civil and military leaders including Army Chief General Raheel Sharif and Interior Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan are present in the meeting, sources told.
Earlier, the private and government schools closed following an alert over possible militant attacks reopened today.
The authorities last week closed all the schools in the country’s largest province, Punjab, following an alert over possible militant attacks, according to a government notice.
The warning came a week after a breakaway Taliban faction attacked Bacha Khan University in Charsadda and killed 21 people, mostly students.
That university reopened briefly on last Monday but then closed indefinitely to give students more time to recover from the incident.
The government memo says there is intelligence report that 13 terrorists recently entered the country from neighboring Afghanistan and were planning suicide attacks on schools across Pakistan.
Schools were also closed in southwestern Balochistan province for the usual winter break there. In the northwest and the south, schools remained open and it was not immediately clear if there where additional concerns that prompted the closures in Punjab.
The Charsadda attack revived memories of the horrific December 2014 Taliban attack on an army run school in the nearby city of Peshawar that killed 150 people, 144 of them children.
The Bacha Khan University has also demanded a series of new security measures, including the extension of a perimeter fence, having a retired military officer take charge of the campus and getting gun licenses for teachers.
All four attackers who took part in the Charsadda assault were killed. Over the weekend, authorities announced the arrest of five others suspected of involvement in that attack.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said it had summoned on Monday a senior Afghan diplomat, Syed Abdul Nasir Yousafi, to convey Islamabad’s concern "regarding the use of Afghan soil by certain terrorist elements" involved in the Charsadda attack.
The Afghan diplomat was told that Pakistan’s investigation has showed that handlers of the four attackers who stormed the Bacha Khan University "were operating from Afghan territory." Kabul was also asked to assist in bringing those individuals to justice.
There was no immediate response from Kabul officials.
