After a prestigious army high school lost at least 141 of its students and teachers on Tuesday, the Pakistani Taliban immediately claimed responsibility, explaining that they had been waiting for months to execute the revenge act. While the prime minister condemned a "cowardly act", a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban described "a gift for those who thought they have crushed us in their so-called military operation in North Waziristan."
Pakistani leader Nawaz Sharif outlined a government commitment to maintain national military action "until the menace of terrorism is eliminated" from his people's country. Mr Sharif—speaking from the school's location of Peshawar, where he arrived soon after the news of the massacre broke—also called for "unity" and stressed the importance of an "unflinching resolve against this plague [terrorism]."
It seems that Mr Sharif was not only serious about his urgency, but his words were effective, as a military operation that was carried out on Thursday and Friday eliminated at least 119 suspected militants in the country's northwestern tribal areas.
Late on Thursday, Pakistani ground forces killed 10 militants, while airstrikes killed another 17. Then, the following morning, troops killed 18 more militants during an operation in Khyber; but, the death toll did not end there, as another 32 alleged terrorists were killed by security forces as part of an ambush attack on the Tirah valley, also in Khyber.
The retaliation of the Pakistani government continued into the night on Friday. As the moratorium on terrorism executions was retracted by the prime minister on the day following the Taliban's mass school killings, two convicted terrorists were hanged lateFriday in Punjab. While human rights groups were not pleased by Mr Sharif's hasty policy reversal, Punjab's home minister expects that the executions will "boost the morale of the nation".