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On 16 December 2014, seven gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The militants, all of whom were foreign nationals, included one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans. They entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children,[6][8] killing 141 people, including 132 schoolchildren, ranging between eight and eighteen years of age.[9][10] A rescue operation was launched by the Pakistan Army's Special Services Group (SSG) special forces, who killed all seven terrorists and rescued 960 people.[6][11][12]
This was the deadliest terrorist attack ever to occur in Pakistan, surpassing the 2007 Karsaz attack.[13] According to various news agencies and commentators, the nature and preparation of the attack was very similar to that of the Beslan school hostage crisis that occurred in the North Ossetia–Alania region of the Russian Federation in 2004.[14][15][16][17][18]
Pakistan responded to the attacks by lifting its moratorium on the death penalty, intensifying the War in North-West Pakistan and authorizing military courts to try civilians through a constitutional amendment. On 2 December 2015, Pakistan hanged four militants involved in the Peshawar massacre,[19] whereas the mastermind of the attack, Omar Khorasani, was killed in a drone strike in eastern Afghanistan on 9 July 2016.[20] The Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the death sentences of two more convicts involved in the attack in the Said Zaman Khan v. Federation case on 29 August 2016.
