Taliban insurgents have killed at least 130 people, most of them children, after storming an army-run school in Pakistan.
Witnesses described how a huge blast shook the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar and gunmen went from classroom to classroom, shooting children.
Distraught parents thronged the city's Lady Reading Hospital in the wake of the attack, weeping uncontrollably as children's bodies arrived, their school uniforms drenched in blood.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack as retaliation for a major military offensive in the region, saying militants had been ordered to shoot older students.
The attack began around 10.30am local time when a group of at least five insurgents, reportedly in military uniforms, entered the school.
A security official said hundreds of students and staff were in the school when the attack began, though according to the military the bulk of them have been evacuated.
Around five-and-a-half hours after the attack began, the army's chief spokesman General Asim Bajwa said the attackers had been cleared from all but one of the school's buildings.
Five militants had been killed, Bajwa said.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif described the attack as a "national tragedy unleashed by savages".
"These were my children. This is my loss. This is the nation's loss," he said.
Provincial information minister Mushtaq Ghani said the death toll had reached 130, with a similar number wounded. The toll was confirmed by another provincial minister.
Provincial chief minister Pervez Khattak said the attackers were wearing uniforms of the government paramilitary Frontier Corps.
Mudassar Abbas, a physics laboratory assistant at the school, said some students were celebrating at a party when the attack began.
"I saw six or seven people walking class-to-class and opening fire on children," he said.
One student said soldiers came to rescue them during a lull in the firing.
"When we were coming out of the class we saw dead bodies of our friends lying in the corridors. They were bleeding. Some were shot three times, some four times," the student said.
"The men entered the rooms one by one and started indiscriminate firing at the staff and students."
The school on Peshawar's Warsak Road is part of the Army Public Schools and Colleges System, which runs 146 schools nationwide for the children of military personnel and civilians.
Its students range in age from around 10 to 18.
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