The first devastating images emerged today of the blood-soaked classrooms where 132 innocent children and nine teachers were massacred by the Taliban.
Horrifying pictures revealed the carnage wrought by seven extremist gunmen who sprayed children with bullets as they sat receiving first aid tuition and exploded suicide bombs in a room of 60 pupils.
As the Pakistani city of Peshawar began the harrowing process of conducting mass funerals, the family of a teacher torched alive in front of her class gathered to say funeral prayers.
Tahira Kazi, the principal of the Army Public School and College in Peshawar, was set on fire by jihadists who slaughtered so many.
It is believed she was targeted because she is married to a retired army colonel, Kazi Zafrullah. The picture obtained by MailOnline shows her standing proudly next to a student believed to be her son.
Today the Pakistani prime minister lifted a moratorium on the death penalty, as the school reopened to reveal the terrifying aftermath of the atrocity, including Mrs Kazi's office, where a terrorist blew himself up.
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Tahira Kazi (left), the principal of the Army Public School and College in Peshawar, was set on fire by jihadists who slaughtered 142 people, most of them children
Devastation: Mrs Kazi's office, where a terrorist blew himself up during a nine-hour rampage
Harrowing: A blood-splattered doorway leading to an auditorium at the school in Peshawar, with spectacles on the floor belonging to one of the victims of the massacre
Shocking: The scene of the final gun battle between the jihadists and Pakistani soldiers
It is believed Mrs Kazi (right) was targeted because she's married to a retired army colonel, Kazi Javaid
Pictures of a blood splattered doorway leading to an auditorium and the scene of the final gun battle also emerged.
In a grim tour of the building photographers were shown inside the auditorium.
The floor is caked in blood in places and dozens of chairs lie in disarray, knocked over by children running for cover as the terrorists hosed them with bullets.
The lucky ones, it transpired, survived by playing dead under these chairs as the gunmen stalked the room, searching for children they'd missed.
The masscre led to calls for the death penalty to be restored. 'It was decided that this moratorium should be lifted. The prime minister approved,' said government spokesman Mohiuddin Wan, referring to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's approval of the decision by a ministerial committee.
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A moratorium on the death penalty was imposed in 2008 and only one execution has taken place since then.
The government declared a three-day mourning period, starting Wednesday.
Some of the funerals were held overnight, but most of the 132 children and 10 school staff members killed in the attack were to be buried Wednesday. Another 121 students and three staff members were wounded.
Meanwhile, one shocking account of the massacre came from 13-year-old survivor Ehsan Elahi, an eighth grade student who was busy with his classmates learning first aid training from army instructors at the main hall of the school when he heard the sound of gunfire nearby.
He told MailOnline: 'Our teachers and instructors asked us to calm down but the sound of the bullets started came closer and closer. In the next minute, the glass of windows and doors of the hall smashed with bullets. Some people started kicking the hall doors.'
He said that situation created panic among the 100 students in the hall.
He said: 'Everybody was trying to find a place to hide but there was not such places in the hall. The students were crying and weeping. There were only chairs and benches to hide behind in the hall. I jumped behind a bench and laid on the ground.' He said the attackers burst in and started 'spraying bullets like hell'.
Tragic scene: Pakistani journalists film and photograph inside an auditorium of the Army Public School
Chairs are upturned and blood stains the floor at the Army Public School auditorium
Survivor Ehsan Elahi told how gunmen burst into the auditorium and fired at children for a full 10 minutes
Army commandos fought the Taliban in a day-long battle until the school was cleared and the attackers dead
Books and note paper litter the floor of the school, dropped as children ran for their lives
Nightmare scene: The pictures of the school's interior emerged as Pakistan began three days of mourning
A local reporter walks past a damaged wall of the Army Public School, riddled with bullet holes
Bleak: Pakistani soldiers walk amidst the debris as a journalist takes pictures behind them
Barbaric act: The terrorists left the school walls scarred with bullet holes as they went on their rampage
Depraved: The terrorists doused some of the female teachers in petrol and set them alight in front of their pupils
Prayer vigils were held across the nation and in other schools today, as Pakistan mourned the dead
One journalist being shown around the Army Public School finds the devastation before him hard to take
Hifsa Khush is thought to have been burned alive in front of her pupils after being doused in petrol.
Elahi continued: 'I saw army instructors falling on the ground first. I saw many of my friends getting bullets on their heads, chests, arms and legs right in front of me. Their body parts and blood were flying like small pieces of cotton in the class room.
'Warm blood and flesh of my friends fell on my face and other parts of my body. It was horrible. They kept on firing bullets for at least 10 minutes and then stopped. It was a pause of a maximum of a minute. Next moment, they started spraying bullets again towards those who were crying with pain or moving. I also received two bullets on my right arm. I wanted to cry with my full voice but I held my pain and did not cry because it meant death.'
Elahi explained how his life was eventually saved by Pakistani soldiers.
He said: 'They were not ready to leave alive even a single person present in the hall. After around 15 minutes, we heard some bullets shots from outside. I think army soldiers reached the school by that time and they fired those bullets. This diverted the attention of the attackers. They ran out from the hall. But, I did not move or cried for next 10 minutes unless army men came to rescue us.
'The hall has turned to pool of blood and death. Human blood, flesh and body parts were scattered everywhere. I saw lifeless faces of many of my friends when I was leaving the hall. Their faces are still in front of my eyes.'
More horrifying accounts have emerged of another female teacher being burned alive as she courageously stood in the path of the terrorists and told her children to run for their lives.
Afsha Ahmed, 24, confronted the marauding gunmen when they burst into her classroom and told them: 'You can only kill my students over my dead body.'
The militants doused her with petrol and set her alight, but she still mustered the strength to beckon her pupils to flee.
One of her students, 15-year-old Irfan Ullah, wept as he recalled her incredible bravery.
He said: 'She was a hero, so brave.
'She jumped up and stood between us and the terrorists before they could target us.
'She warned them: "You can only kill them over my dead body". I remember her last words - she said: "I won't see my students lying in blood on the floor".'
Irfan, who suffered serious injuries to his chest and stomach in the chaos, said he hoped Mrs Ahmed would forgive him for not trying to protect her and for any mistakes he ever made in class.
'I felt so selfish as we ran away to safe our lives instead of trying to save our teacher who sacrificed her life for our better tomorrow,' he added.
Another teacher, Hifsa Khush, is also thought to have been burned alive in front of her pupils after being doused in petrol.
Prayer vigils were held across the nation and in other schools, students spoke of their shock at the carnage in Peshawar, where seven Taliban gunmen, explosives strapped to their bodies, scaled a back wall using a ladder to get into the military-run establishment in the morning hours on Tuesday.
REVEALED: THE BLOODTHIRSTY TALIBAN LEADER DUBBED 'RADIO MULLAH' BEHIND PAKISTANI SCHOOL MASSACRE - WHO ALSO ORDERED MALALA HIT
The bloody slaughter of 132 children at a school in Pakistan yesterday was ordered by Maulana Fazlullah - the head of the country's Taliban terror group and a man whose previous crimes include ordering the murder of teenage education campaigner Malala Yousafzai.
The firebrand militant, whose thick black beard reaches halfway down his chest, took control of the Pakistani Taliban 13 months ago, and it is thought yesterday's massacre may have been his barbaric revenge for Malala, 17, being award the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year.
Whatever his twisted motive, Fazlullah has succeeded in uniting the world in revulsion once again.
Terror leader: Maulana Fazlullah - the firebrand militant, whose thick black beard reaches halfway down his chest - took control of the Pakistani Taliban 13 months ago
Born Fazal Hayat in 1974 in the Swat Valley, Fazlullah is a member of the Yousafzai tribe - the same group of ethnic Pashtuns from which Malala takes her surname.
Aged 18 he became the leader of the local terror group Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi after its leadership was decimated by arrests following the September 11 attacks in New York.
In the hope of cementing his legitimacy as leader, Fazlullah married the daughter of Sufi Muhammad, who founded Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi in 2002. Rumours that his henchmen kidnapped the bride and forced her to marry him have dogged Fazlullah ever since.
While in jail, Muhammad ordered Fazlullah to adopt his new name and sent him reams of radical Islamic literature designed to assist and guide his son in law.
By the time Muhammad was released from prison in 2008, Fazlullah's leadership was secure enough for its founder not to resume control.
Later that year Fazlullah allied Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi with the Pakistani Taliban, and he started taking direct orders from Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.
This relationship would allow Fazlullah to become increasingly close to senior figures in the terror group.
While taking orders from the Pakistani Taliban, Fazlullah controlled more than 4,000 fighters - helping him to effectively run a parallel government in the Swat Valley and impose strict Sharia law across 57 villages.
It was while governing the Swat Valley that Fazlullah began using FM radio stations to broadcast his firebrand sermons in the area, earning him the nickname Radio Mullah.
His rantings about 'sins' such as television, music, and computers were deemed compulsory listening among the villagers as the Taliban imposed a rigorous version of Islamic law, publicly beheading and flogging wrongdoers and burning schools.
Rise to power: Maulana Fazlullah was elected as head of the Pakistani Taliban after the death in a U.S. drone strike of long-term leader Hakimullah Mehsud (pictured centre in brown hat)
In 2012 Fazlullah ordered the death of Malala Yousafzai - the teenage education campaigner who almost died when a masked gunman in Swat Valley jumped into a vehicle taking girls home from school and shouted 'Who is Malala?' before shooting her in the head.
Last November Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud was killed by a U.S. drone strike, leading to the Taliban's supreme council electing Fazlullah as its new head.
Since then, the militant has specialised in the kind attention grabbing savagery that deflects attention away from the Taliban's declining influence in Swat Valley, which has been eroded by bitter feuds with local clans - including the traditionally dominant Mehsud tribe.
Fazlullah has also found his power reined in by the Pakistani military's fresh push into the Taliban's former North Waziristan stronghold.
In September Fazlullah also declared the Taliban's support for the Islamic State and vowed to send fighters to assist the terror group as it was wages bloody war in Syria and Iraq.
Yesterday's brutal massacre of schoolchildren is widely seen as an attempt by Fazlullah to prove to his rivals that the Taliban is still a relevant force.
The strategy may not be particularly well thought out, however, as it is only likely to add to the tribal divisions that have drastically weakened the group over the past year.
People attend the funeral of a student killed in Tuesday's Taliban attack in Peshawar
The attack was the deadliest slaughter of innocents in the country and horrified a nation already weary of unending terrorist assaults.
Army commandos fought the Taliban in a day-long battle until the school was cleared and the attackers dead.
'They finished in minutes what I had lived my whole life for, my son,' said laborer Akhtar Hussain, tears streaming down his face as he buried his 14-year-old, Fahad. He said he had worked for years in Dubai to earn a livelihood for his children.
'That innocent one is now gone in the grave, and I can't wait to join him, I can't live anymore,' he wailed, banging his fists against his head.
The Taliban said the attack was revenge for a military offensive against their safe havens in the northwest, along the border with Afghanistan, which began in June. Analysts said the school siege showed that even diminished, the militant group still could inflict horrific carnage.
The attack drew swift condemnation from around the world. President Barack Obama said the 'terrorists have once again showed their depravity.'
Pakistan's teenage Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai - herself a survivor of a Taliban shooting - said she was 'heartbroken' by the bloodshed.
Even Taliban militants in neighboring Afghanistan decried the killing spree, calling it 'un-Islamic.'
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged to step up the campaign that - along with U.S. drone strikes - has targeted the militants.
'We will take account of each and every drop of our children's blood,' said Sharif, who rushed to Peshawar shortly after the attack to offer support for the victims.
In neighboring India, which has long accused Pakistan of supporting anti-India guerrillas, schools on Wednesday observed two minutes of silence for the Peshawar victims at the urging of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who called the attack 'a senseless act of unspeakable brutality.'
Ziauddin Yousafzai, Pakistani diplomat and the father of Malala Yousafzai, told the BBC Today programme that his family was traumatised by the atrocity.
He said: '‘Yesterday we heard about this horrible news, my whole family was in trauma. It is the extreme of extremism.
‘I can imagine how much sadness, terror and horror those families will be passing through now.
‘Yesterday my wife had a fit, she went into unconsciousness for five to 10 minutes. I have never seen my daughter so sad and upset as I saw her yesterday.
‘Schools should be safe places for children. I am afraid that if they [Taliban] are not countered, we may see more horrible things in future.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2877148/Pictured-teacher-burnt-death-class-children-married-soldier-scale-destruction-inside-Taliban-massacre-school-emerges.html#ixzz3M9hle4Bc
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