Authorities evacuated a girls’ school in Faisalabad on Friday when hundreds of terrified parents rushed to save their daughters after rumours of an attack, highlighting frayed nerves days after gunmen stormed a university killing 21 people.
The incident in Punjab came as the Taliban faction behind Wednesday’s massacre at the Bacha Khan university vowed to target schools across Pakistan.
Police said rumours of an attack at the Tandlianwala girls’ high school had spread swiftly, sending teachers and students racing for safety.
“The panic increased after a security guard fired shots in the air as students and teachers were running to the main gate,” Mehar Fazal Abbas, a senior police official, said.
Another police official in Tandlianwala confirmed the incident and said that some girls had phoned their parents for help as the rumour spread.
Hundreds of parents raced to the school to protect their children, he added.
Video footage seen by AFP shows terrified parents shouting and kicking at the school’s main iron gate. Authorities later evacuated the school and closed it down.
On Thursday, one day after the attack, authorities carried out a mock drill at a university in Punjab that saw a similar panic among students who did not realise it was fake.
The incidents underscored feelings of insecurity two days after heavily armed gunmen stormed the campus in Charsadda on Wednesday, killing 21 people in an attack that had chilling echoes of a 2014 assault on Army Public School in Peshawar.
Security forces were still deployed in Charsadda on Friday, while in Peshawar, two policemen were shot dead at a checkpoint by unknown gunmen.
The Taliban faction that has claimed responsibility for both those attacks issued a video message on Friday vowing to target schools throughout the country.