Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN)Militants raided a university in northwest Pakistan Wednesday, timing their attack to a ceremony at the school to ensure maximum casualties. They slaughtered at least 19 people, authorities said.
The scent of burning metal hung in the air a few hours after the attack as a CNN crew made its way through the building where many were shot and wounded. Blood covered stairwells, the walls were pockmarked by bullets. Some of the students' laundry still hung in a courtyard.
Bacha Khan University in Charsadda is in Peshawar, less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) from where the Pakistani Taliban slayed 145 people, including 132 children, in a school attack in December 2014.
It's unclear whether the group was responsible for the carnage that Mehmood Khan, provincial home minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said killed at least 19 people along with four terrorists. He expects the death toll of the innocent to rise.
One Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Umar Mansoor, said the attack was in retaliation for military operations against the group. Mansoor was also the mastermind behind the December 2014 attack, Pakistan's DawnNews reported.
But another spokesman, Mohammad Khurrassani, from the Pakistani Taliban's central organization, disavowed any role.
We "strongly condemn the attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda and disown the attack, saying this is not according to Shariah," Khurrassani said.
