NEW DELHI: The geopolitical significance of an India-US entente could not be more evident as Obama touched down on Sunday morning to be greeted by Narendra Modi.

With the two nations armed with a sense of 'exceptionalism', convergences in their strategic outlook have more often been the stuff of thinktank discourse than executive action. 

The prevailing global environment brings the two to a state of greater strategic interoperability. The AfPak region has always been most difficult.

Both countries recognize the dangers Pakistan-sponsored terror poses to itself, the region and the world. But neither India nor the US has trusted each other enough to have that no-holds-barred dialogue yet. 

READ ALSO: Terror havens in Pak not acceptable, Obama says 

The US has over the years moved closer to India's position on Pakistan. Since 2008, US banned many groups via the UN and through its treasury department. Intelligence sharing has been better. India no longer froths at the mouth at Washington's engagement imperative with Pakistan.

The two countries now look at deeper engagement to secure Afghanistan, contain the damage Pakistan is doing to itself and the threat of terrorism. The real Obama-Modi conversation will involve Pakistan's future. India is worried about growing Chinese activities in Pakistan and PoK and will seek US expertise in managing the two-front threat. 

READ ALSO: Joint declaration on South China Sea may irk Bejing 

The US discussion that it needs to engage India to balance China is greeted with skepticism in New Delhi. India believes its own growth would be a natural balancing factor. India, like the US, wants to build a more comprehensive engagement with China, while building its relationship with nations on China's periphery. 

Despite the obvious military component, India has maintained primacy of commerce in its investment in the South China Sea oil blocks. To that extent, both sides will need to work together to place India into Asian trading arrangements like Apec and TTP. 

That'll involve heavy lifting by India domestically, but as India grows and China becomes more of an expansionist power, India's "Act East" policy will become an essential part of the US "rebalance".

From Dark to Darker

Pakistan was plunged into darkness after a power transmission line broke down early on Sunday in an incident blamed on a rebel attack.

The power failure, one of the worst Pakistan has experienced, caused electricity to be cut in 80% of the country, including major cities and the capital Islamabad.

It was later restored in much of the country, with the national power company saying normal distribution would resume within hours.

Officials said the blackout began after midnight when a transmission line connecting a privately-run power plant to the national grid was damaged.

An AFP reporter in the eastern city of Lahore said the airport was also affected by the breakdown.

Minister of state for water and power Abid Sher Ali later issued an apology and said electricity had been restored in most of the country, blaming the breakdown on rebels blowing up the line in Naseerabad district, which lies in southwestern Baluchistan province.

A spokesman for the national power company said that “electricity has been restored in all parts of the country.”

“Some 6,000 megawatts of electricity has been added to the national system and within a couple of hours distribution will be normal,” the spokesman said.

Pakistan’s electricity distribution system is a complex – and delicate – web. A major fault at one section often leads to chain reactions and breakdowns of power generation and transmission.

In addition to chronic infrastructure problems, the energy sector is also trapped into a vicious “circular debt” brought on by the dual effect of the government setting low electricity prices and customers failing to pay for it.

State utilities therefore lose money, and cannot pay private power generating companies, which in turn cannot pay the oil and gas suppliers, who cut off the supply.

Earlier this week, prime minister Nawaz Sharif cancelled his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos to deal with a severe petrol shortage at home.

The fuel crisis began last week when Pakistan State Oil was forced to slash imports because banks refused to extend any more credit to the government-owned company, which supplies 80% of the country’s oil.

PK In The Dark

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Towns and cities across Pakistan plunged into darkness early Sunday when what officials said was an attack by militants on a transmission line short-circuited the national electricity grid, presenting a new indictment of the government’s faltering efforts to solve the country’s chronic power crisis.

Emergency efforts to end the blackout, widely described as Pakistan’s worst ever, resulted in a partial restoration of power in the capital, Islamabad, and the most populous city, Karachi, by Sunday evening. Even so, 80 percent of the country remained without power, including the provincial capitals of Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, an official said.

The minister for water and power, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, blamed separatist rebels in the western province of Baluchistan who, he said, had blown up a critical transmission line. But experts said the attack only highlighted the growing vulnerability of Pakistan’s power grid, which has come under severe strain since the electricity crisis began in earnest about seven years ago.

The blackout was also another blow for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose government had already spent much of the week grappling with a severe fuel shortage that closed gasoline stations across Punjab, the country’s most politically powerful province.

A hastily convened government inquiry into the gasoline shortages, which lasted several days, laid the blame on the state oil regulatory authority. But the sight of lines miles long for gasoline at a time of low global oil prices only deepened public impatience with Mr. Sharif, who was faced with the crisis on his return from a visit to Saudi Arabia.

Rebels in Baluchistan, a vast but sparsely populated province, have been fighting for independence for almost a decade. The military has quelled the uprising with harsh tactics, including the abduction and torture of hundreds of suspected separatists, and there is little open fighting. Instead, the rebels mostly carry out guerrilla attacks on government installations such as rail lines, gas pipelines and electrical towers.

The rebels have attacked the electricity grid in Baluchistan three times since Jan. 13, said Muhammad Younas Dhaga, a senior official at the water and power ministry, during a briefing to reporters on Sunday. The third assault, which took place just before midnight on Saturday, blew up two important towers near the Uch power station, tripping the national grid.

Mr. Dhaga said Pakistan’s national grid was generating 7,000 megawatts of power but needed about 4,500 megawatts more to meet demand. Power plants that are currently closed will be brought online, and the crisis should have significantly eased by Monday, he said.

Fixing Pakistan’s dilapidated electricity system was a central campaign promise of Mr. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N party when it won a landslide victory in the May 2013. But his government has failed to deliver on those promises, with regular blackouts of up to 10 hours per day in the major cities and 20 hours in rural areas.

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The sheer scale of the crisis accounts for part of the problem, experts say. The national power system is afflicted by complex debt issues, political interference, crumbling transmission lines and widespread electricity theft. Those problems are compounded by the refusal of many government departments and military bases to pay their electricity bills, which has starved regional power companies of the funds needed to upgrade.

Last year, Mr. Sharif signed agreements with China to help build four power stations. But it will be many years before those projects come online, and the government has made little visible progress toward their completion since announcing the initiatives.

Pakistan’s political tumult has also played a role in the crisis. Since August, Mr. Sharif has been under political assault by the opposition politician Imran Khan, who led a sit-in outside Parliament for four months over accusations that Mr. Sharif’s party had rigged the last election.

Although that protest ended recently, Mr. Sharif’s administration still appears beleaguered, while the emergence of an increasingly assertive military led by Gen. Raheel Sharif (who is not related to the prime minister) has further eroded his authority

Rush Limbaugh on Terror

RUSH: You want to hear even more absurdity? What is the focus of militant Islamism today? It's Yemeni Al-Qaeda, is it not, Mr. Snerdley? Al-Qaeda in Yemen is the new focus. They're the guys that supposedly blew up Charlie Hebdo and all that. So what's Obama doing? He's releasing Al-Qaeda from Yemen prisoners at Club Gitmo in the middle of all this.

I'm watching Fox News today and of course they're trying to understand it because nobody can come to grips -- I'm listening to them ask questions of each other. "You know, is it possible that maybe, uh, you know, Obama's so far off the beaten path of where most Americans are. Is it possible that maybe -- oh, it couldn't be, but I know a lot of people are -- is it possible that he's, like, really doing this on purpose?" We're into our seventh year and there are still people that can't get their arms around all this. "Is it possible that Obama might be, oh, no --" Let me ask you a question.

Why, when the focus of the most recent terror attacks happens to be Al-Qaeda in Yemen, why the hell is Obama releasing Al-Qaeda from Yemen from Club Gitmo? Why is he doing it? Two reasons. Yeah, in your face is part of it. But I'm gonna give you the charitable reason, and it's gonna be pretty close to right. Obama really believes that the prison at Guantanamo is responsible for all this. I think Obama and a number of leftists actually believe that when a terrorist says, "Yeah, I saw those pictures at Abu Ghraib, yeah, that's what made me a terrorist." I think he believes it.

They're so invested in Bush being the devil. They're so invested in Bush being to blame for all this. They're so invested in having the convenience of being able to blame George W. Bush and Gitmo's Bush. I think Obama can tell the world, "I'm just trying to stop this stuff. I'm just trying to stop these attacks." He doesn't realize that by releasing Al-Qaeda in Yemen prisoners they're free to go perform jihad. He thinks releasing them is akin to appeasing them. That's the charitable view, Snerdley, that's the charitable view. That's being as charitable as I can... (interruption) I'm just telling you I'm being as charitable as I can be. I'm not telling you I believe this. I'm just telling you that's the most charitable I can be to explain it.

He really, really believes that our prison at Guantanamo Bay is the reason these Islamists hate us and the reason they keep attacking people. He promised he's gonna close it and he hasn't done it and he's gonna keep trying to get prisoners out of there as a means of stopping terror. (interruption) You don't think he's that stupid? Then why else would he be doing this? Unless he wants these people to act the reason they got imprisoned in the first place, is he releasing them so they'll go continue to perform militant acts of terror?

You really want to say that? Is that what you want to level as an accusation? Of course you don't want to say it. Well, we do know there's a recidivism rate. We do know that many released terrorists go back and join their buddies on the battlefield. He knows it, too. Exactly right.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We're gonna start in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Gary, I appreciate you waiting, and welcome. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Great to talk to you, Rush. Yeah. I have a quick question. You there?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I have a theory. That the reason we opened communications with Cuba and he's getting rid of all the terrorists from Gitmo, is he wants to close that base down and give it back to Cuba and say that we took it from 'em, and he makes everybody happy on the left.

RUSH: You think that's all there is to this is just giving Cuba Gitmo back?

CALLER: Hey, there's more to it than that, but that's my theory. That's how he operates. He can close down Gitmo, be the big hero and give it to Cuba and everybody's happy on the left.

RUSH: So you think -- I just want to make sure I understand here before I comment. The main reason he wants to normalize relations with Cuba is to ultimately close Gitmo, that that's a the fastest, best way to close Gitmo, is to normalize relations with Cuba and then give them the prison, the area, the territory back and receive accolades from the left for finally closing it down?

CALLER: That's what I say, yes. That's my theory.

RUSH: Okay. Well, I think he can close Gitmo without reopening channels to Cuba. I think he could shut it down. If he wanted to, he could have shut it down any time he wanted. Now, he's run into real-world circumstances which made it hard to do, but the people in there are not Dick and Jane. The people in there are hardened SOBs, and the people in their home countries often don't want them back. There's nowhere to put them. Nobody wants them. If you're gonna close the place, if you're gonna let 'em out of jail, if you're gonna release them, you release them to allied nations, and if they don't want them, then there's not much you can do, other than give them back to Al-Qaeda.

Now, that would pose all kinds of PR problems, which are major problems to Democrats. Public relations and image is a much more important thing to them than substance is. He wanted to close Gitmo on day one and found out the problems involved. But I think normalizing relations to Cuba, normalizing relationships with a dictatorship is about much more than just Guantanamo Bay. He could close it down, he could use the base closure procedure, he could use any number of things. I mean, if the Constitution doesn't matter, and if none of the other behavioral or policy protocols matter, there's nothing to stop him from just closing it, whether we normalize relationships with Cuba or not.

I think the normalization of a relationship with Cuba fits perfectly in the theme that Obama believes much of American history is flawed and mistaken and unwarranted, and I think he believes the Cuban embargo was something that never should have happened. I think he's part of the crowd that believes it is one of the primary reasons the Cuban people are suffering. The people Obama sidles up to around the world are authoritarians. (interruption) You're surprised that none of the Democrats are a little bit upset at this? You mean the normalization, because this is sort of mocking JFK's -- (interruption) Well, I don't know how much of a hero JFK is to these people anymore. I mean, in reality.

He's an election-time hero. He's a good hero for pictures and speeches and stories at a convention. But in terms of JFK policy and what he did, Obama's not gonna cite JFK as a role model. JFK, if he were intellectually honest and still alive today, wouldn't even have a home in today's Democrat Party. But I think the normalization of relations with Cuba is about much more than Guatemala anyway. But clearly I don't doubt that Obama would love to get rid of Guantanamo Bay as a US installation. I don't doubt that at all. I just don't think he has to normalize relations with Cuba to do it.

Brandon Acworth, Georgia, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Great to be on your show. I've been listening to you for a long time. This is my first time actually getting through.

RUSH: Well, I'm glad you made it. Thank you.

CALLER: All right, well, the point I wanted to make is this. We've seen people like Jimmy Carter, Howard Dean, talking about these terrorists and how they're not really Islamic. You know, Howard Dean went so far as to call 'em cultists, not even Islamic cultists, but just cultists. So my question is, why is the US government giving these people that we detained Korans, prayer rugs, Halal meals and all the things that conform to Islam --

RUSH: Hey, you're not supposed to ask that. You're not supposed to bring that up.

CALLER: Inquisitive minds want to know. It seems to me that the left wants it both ways.

RUSH: If they're not Islamist, why are they demanding Korans? Right.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: And if they're not Islamists, why do they need prayer rugs?

CALLER: So when these guys commit their acts of terrorism, they're not Islamic and in no way represent Islam, but when they're detained, they are Islamic and absolutely must be afforded everything their religion requires.

RUSH: Absolutely right, which, to me, asks another question. Why is it these names you mention, Howard Dean and whoever else, but he's not alone, you can pick any Democrat, why -- honestly, now -- why are these Democrats who are saying this so insistent that these terrorists not be thought of as Islamic, when they clearly are? Your question is a great illustration of that. They demand prayer rugs. They demand Korans, all the prayers at the right times of day. And they're granted all of it. Dietary conditions, those requests are met. Yet they're not Islamists. Clearly they are.

So why is it so important for Howard Dean and whoever else, why is it so important that we not believe this? Why do they not want to believe it? That's what intrigues me. We can all provide answers. We can all come up with possibilities. They're either afraid to intimidate them, or, alternatively -- and don't discount this -- "Islamic" in front of "terrorism" discredits it. There's nobody tolerant of Islamic terrorism. But if they're just a bunch of cultists -- I think in the modern day Democrat Party, and I've thought about this and I've referenced it in roundabout ways during campaign years.

But I think in the Democrat Party, you know and I know, that in their world the United States is and has been the destabilizing force in the world, be it our superpower status, be it our large economy, be it our racism, be it our bigotry, be it our exclusionary policies, whatever, there's a large segment of the Democrat Party and its voting base that considers the United States the problem in the world. We don't liberate; we conquer. We force ourselves on people and we steal resources from these countries that we supposedly are liberating and defending. We've taken their oil. We take their minerals. We take everything, we steal it, and people get rich.

The Democrat Party is just infested with people who do not believe the United States is good for the world. Well, if a bunch of people over here in Yemen think the same thing, well, there's a bond. I've always -- and I've made mention of this before. I have always -- and I'm not just trying to be funny with this or be jocular, make a joke about it. It's always stunned me when I listen to somebody like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticize the United States and then listen to a Democrat presidential candidate criticize the US, and it's almost identical. And if there's a Republican president involved, I know that, you know, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rips into George W. Bush or when Hugo Chavez did it, it sounded like Democrats criticizing Bush.

They sound like Democrats criticizing America. I always said to myself, my gosh, if I were Democrats, I'd be embarrassed. These reprobates sound just like me or I sound just like them. But it clearly didn't bother them. It didn't stop. You know, politics makes strange bedfellows. And if you are of a mind-set that your country is the problem in the world, no matter how illegitimate or legitimate your view, no matter how insane, stupid, whatever you are, if you believe that, if you really believe your country is the problem in the world and then some group of malcontents come along like Al-Qaeda or like militant Islam and think the same thing, well, there's a little bond of agreement there.

Maybe you don't want to upset that bond. So when Howard Dean and these guys say, "Don't call 'em Islamists," there's a parentheses. "You know, they may be right about some things. We don't want to discredit these people. You know, the Islamists, they're not the problem. These cultists are." Do you see or hear from Democrats routinely, do you hear, do you see words, speeches, TV appearances detailing how we need to wipe these people out? You really don't, do you? What we hear is criticism of how we're trying to, but we don't hear stem-winders, barn-burners. We don't see fist pounding from Democrats about how this threat's got to be dealt with. "We must take care of this."

There's no Churchills out here. And of course Churchill was alone, too. You know, Churchill identifying the Nazis for the Brits, 1938, 1939, '40. They all thought he was the kook, that Chamberlain was the brilliant. Churchill, perhaps the greatest statesman in 200 years, before the peak of his renaissance was considered an absolute lunatic for thinking what he thought about Hitler, for thinking what he thought about Islamists. He properly identified them way back in the 1800s. I've been doing a little reading on Churchill lately. He was way ahead of the class on virtually everything, but especially on Hitler. Nobody wanted to believe it, and so they didn't. So Churchill ends up being castigated as a kook, warmonger, I mean, you name it.

Well, today the evidence is clear who the warmongers are and who the terrorists are. I mean, the voices that stand up and say, "No, no, you can't say that about --" they're all Democrats. He was right about the communists, too. The famous Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri. That's where he gave the Iron Curtain speech, state of Missouri, Fulton, Missouri. And two days before that he was in Miami and made a speech, a predecessor for it. Oh, he had the communists nailed. He had them nailed way, way back in the thirties as well.

The point is that it's not just today that people who correctly identify things are considered oddball kooks. Churchill was, too. And he was perhaps the greatest living Brit there's ever been, in many people's view. But it just strikes me that here we are in the middle of Islamist militant violent Islamist death, bombings, attacks, and there are people standing up almost immediately saying, "Don't criticize 'em." And they're almost all Democrats doing it. So I, naturally curious, say why? Something has to explain it. What is it? I don't know.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The question that I just raised, what is this reluctance on the part of leftists to properly identify militant Islamic terrorism? And one theory is that they're scared. No, no, don't discount this. One reason is these people are scared, and they are trying to mollify, that they believe the best way to mollify and calm these people down is to be nice to 'em and not demonize 'em.

Before you pooh-pooh that, try to remember what you know about conflict resolution 101, as it has been taught to our young kids now for decades. And remember everything you've heard over the last 20 years about liberals and bad guys. Let's not criticize them. Let's not demean them. Remember Mrs. Clinton: We must empathize with our enemy. We must understand what their grievances are. This is called smart power, and this is what we have brought to the State Department.

They believe that saying anything which is critical or demonizes them is not going to bring peace. But I also think there's a little personal -- Jim Clancy has left CNN after a controversial series of tweets he found himself involved in with Charlie Hebdo. He's quit. Wait 'til you hear this. That's coming at the top of the hour, too. By the way, I think there's another factor here. You look at Howard Dean and some of these guys, I really do believe with, and I'm dead serious, I do believe that some of these liberals just can't believe that these groups are that evil, that they're that mean.

It's conservatives who are the problem. It's any religion other. Christianity is the problem. Conservatives are the problem. And then there's the old saw, how much of this are we responsible for, meaning Islamic terrorism, with our support for Israel. So there's a whole bunch of just bat excrement lunatic reasons that might explain these people's idiocy.
- See more at: http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_36777.php#sthash.xEoZ1kbl.dpuf

Peshwar Death Toll

SHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan is allowing teachers to carry guns in school after a recent school massacre but the move has triggered anger and alarm from educators and parents in the northwest of the country.

"Our job is teaching, not carrying a gun," said Malik Khalid Khan, a head schoolteacher Peshawar and president of teachers' union in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The provincial government allowed teachers to carry weapons after the Dec.16 Taliban attack ‎on a school in Peshawar left more than 150 people dead.

The government closed educational institutions across the country for 26 days after the militant siege of the Army Public School (APS). When they reopened on January 12, officials made it mandatory for the province's nearly 40,000 schools to install CCTV cameras, hire private security guards and raise the height of schools' boundary walls, saying there simply weren't enough police to keep the region's kids and teachers safe.

First Video From Inside Peshawar School Shows Scale of Attack

NBC NEWS

 
 
 

"[Teachers carrying weapons] is the only available option to ensure security of the students and teachers in schools," Khyber Pakhtunkhwa education minister Atif Khan said, adding that the decision was a result of teachers' demands. "The teachers are worried about their and their students' security."

But opponents to new rule say it will only promote violence in a society that has borne the brunt of militancy and religious extremism.

"The government has already put our security at risk by engaging the schoolteachers in polio-eradication program and now wanted us to become soldiers," said Khan, the head teacher. "This isn't acceptable to us."

Father-of-four Mohammad Sabir Ahmad ‎agrees.

‎"Yesterday I was listening to my daughters before leaving for the school," said the Peshawar resident. "The elder was telling her younger sister to immediately escape and never come for her search if the school is attacked by the Taliban."

He added: "If our children see their teachers teaching them while carrying a weapon, what will be their future?"

MUSHTAQ YUSUFZAI

Mushtaq Yusufzai is a journalist based in Peshawar, Pakistan. Originally from Mardan in Pakistan's North... Expand Bio

NEWS

Dec 16

Death 'All Around Me': Victims Relive Pakistan School Massacre





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BY MUSHTAQ YUSUFZAI, WAJAHAT S. KHAN, F. BRINLEY BRUTON AND ALASTAIR JAMIESON

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan was plunged into mourning Tuesday after Taliban militants in suicide vests laid siege to a school, massacring 132 children and 10 teachers during eight hours of sheer terror. In total, 145 people were killed, including three soldiers, officials said.

Those who survived emerged with stories of horror — of gunmen shooting indiscriminately into crowds or killing youngsters one by one.

"One of my teachers was crying, she was shot in the hand and she was crying in pain,'' Shahrukh Khan, 15, who was shot in both legs but survived, told Reuters. "One terrorist then walked up to her and started shooting her until she stopped making any sound.

"All around me my friends were lying injured and dead.''

A military source told NBC News that the attackers were wearing police uniforms and suicide vests.

"They burnt a teacher in front of the students in a classroom," he said. "They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch."

The government of Pakistan declared three days of mourning for the lives lost.

Desperate Scenes as Wounded Peshawar Students Receieve Treatment

NBC NEWS

 
 
 

Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a military spokesman, told NBC News that at least 132 children were killed in the attack, along with 10 staff from the school — including the principal. Seven militants were killed and seven special forces soldiers were injured.

"They didn't take any hostages initially and started firing in the hall," Bajwa also told a press conference. He told NBC News that they had enough ammunition and rations to have kept up the siege for days.

At a hospital near the school, blood stained the floors. Crying relatives roamed the wards and searched operating rooms, desperately searching for their sons and daughters.

One room at at the Central Military hospital was filled with teenagers who had bullet wounds, shrapnel embedded in their flesh and burns.

A doctor, Brig. Muhammad Waqar, said his son attends the school and he watched with dread as victim after victim was brought in

"I was waiting for him to turn up dead in an ambulance," he said. "I wanted to grab a gun and go to the school."

The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack, which Pakistani officials said appeared to be aimed at the children of senior military personnel.

School Massacre Victim Describes Horrific Shooting

NBC NEWS

 
 
 

Uniformed militants struck shortly before 11 a.m. local time (1 a.m. ET) when about 1,000 students — in grades one through 10 — and teachers were believed to be inside.

"We were standing outside the school and firing suddenly started and there was chaos everywhere and the screams of children and teachers," said Jamshed Khan, a school bus driver.

"The gunmen entered class by class and shot some kids one by one," one student who was in the Army Public School in Peshawar at the time told local media.

As the siege continued and Pakistani security forces battled to stop the assault, five "heavy" explosions were heard from the school at around 5 a.m. ET. Bombs planted by the attackers slowed rescue efforts, a military official said, and the massacre was not declared over until after 9 a.m. ET.

Dozens of Children Killed as Taliban Gunmen Storm Peshawar School

NBC NEWS

 
 
 

Wounded student Abdullah Jamal told The Associated Press he was getting first-aid instructions and training with a team of Pakistani army medics when the violence began for real. When the shooting started, Jamal said nobody knew what was going on in the first few seconds.

"Then I saw children falling down who were crying and screaming. I also fell down. I learned later that I have got a bullet," he said, speaking from his hospital bed. He had been shot in the leg.

Hours after all the children had been removed from the school, soldiers angrily roamed the campus.

"It's interesting that they came through this graveyard," said one officer, pointing to a cemetery adjacent to the school. "It's sad. They stepped over the graves of the dead to create more death."

President Barack Obama slammed the attack and said America stands with the people of Pakistan and its government's efforts to fight terrorism.

"By targeting students and teachers in this heinous attack, terrorists have once again shown their depravity," he said in a statement.

As the carnage played out in Peshawar, Pakistan's military carried out 10 airstrikes in the Khyber region, between Peshawar and the Afghanistan border, based on "actionable intelligence" according to a spokesman.

The Pakistani Taliban has vowed to attack government targets as it fights off ahuge army operation in the country's tribal region.

Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani told Reuters his group was responsible for the attack. "Our suicide bombers have entered the school, they have instructions not to harm the children, but to target the army personnel," he said.