Sharif recommends gallantry awards for Peshawar school victims

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday recommended conferring gallantry awards posthumously on those killed in the Peshawar carnage to pay homage to the 150 departed souls.

Heavily armed Taliban militants killed 150 people, 132 of them children, in a bloody December 16 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, the main town in Pakistan's northwest.

The attack drew international condemnation that put the Pakistani government under pressure to combat militants in its territory by intensifying military offensives in strongholds.

According to a statement by the Prime Minister House, Sharif "advised the President of Pakistan to approve conferment of Sitara-e-Shujaat (Posthumous) and Tamgha-e- Shujaat (Posthumous) on the martyred teachers and students and staff of Army Public School, Peshawar respectively".

"The decision has been taken to pay homage to the 122 students, two teachers and 20 staff members of the school who were martyred in a terrorist attack," it said.

The attack created uproar in the country and the decision to confer the civilian awards seems to be an effort to silence the critics who blame officials for being slow in addressing complaints by the relatives of the victims.