Gunmen kill five on Pakistan school bus (Reuters)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Gunmen opened fire on a school bus in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing four children and the driver, a police official said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the shooting took place in a city where Taliban militants often carry out attacks.

“First a rocket was fired but it didn’t hit. Then gunmen opened fire,” said Sahibzada Sajjad, deputy superintendent of police in Peshawar.

Eighteen people, including 15 children, were wounded.

At Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, children lay in beds with shrapnel and bullet wounds, their uniforms soaked in blood.

“We were in the van, going home like every day. Suddenly I heard an explosion and gunfire,” said 8-year-old Sabir.

Pakistan’s Taliban, allies of militants in neighboring Afghanistan, are waging a campaign of mostly suicide bombings in a bid to topple the U.S.-backed government.

Al Qaeda have suffered several setbacks since U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid in Pakistan on May 2.

But their allies in the Pakistani Taliban, who vowed to avenge his death, have carried out a series of high-profile attacks.

Another policeman said the shooting occurred near the Khyber Model School, which employed the bus.

The Taliban have become more assertive since bin Laden was killed.

They plan to kidnap senior Pakistani officials to pressure authorities to release relatives of bin Laden detained after his death, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said last week.

Bin Laden’s wives and several of his children are being held by authorities in the South Asian nation.

The Pakistani Taliban are holding more than 20 ng tribesmen hostage in an area straddling the border with Afghanistan and have demanded the release of scores of prisoners and an end to tribal elders’ support of offensives against them.

The teenage tribesmen from Pakistan’s northwestern Bajaur tribal region were abducted by the militants on August 31 while they were on an outing in Afghanistan’s border province of Kunar.

(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony in Islamabad; and Faris Ali and Fayaz Aziz in Peshawar; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)

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