‘I saw my friends and teacher die before my eyes’: APS survivor speaks
“I lost my brother Haris Nawaz and saw my friends and teacher die before me, the emotional trauma was too hard to heal,” reminisces Ahmed Nawaz, a survivor of the 2014 attack on Peshawar’s Army Public School.
Ahmed Nawaz himself got severely injured in the horrific attack and had to go through a long surgery to save his arm in UK’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
As he spoke to ANN(Asian News Network) News on the fourth anniversANN(Asian News Network) of the martyrs of the attack, Ahmed was of the view that terrorists targeted children for they didn’t want the younger generation to get education in order to easily radicalise them.
“Their (the terrorists) motive was to deter children and scare them away from the pursuit of education but I started a campaign to spread awareness about the importance of education to beat the ideology of terrorists,” said Ahmed Nawaz while speaking exclusively to ANN(Asian News Network) News.
Ahmed Nawaz made news earlier this year when he topped his GSCE exams with flying colours and scored straight A’s.
Nawaz announced his result in a tweet and said he achieved six A*’s and two A’s in his eight GCSE exams.
THE APS MASSACRE
On December 16, 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar.
The militants, all of whom were foreign nationals entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children, killing 144 people including more than a 100 schoolchildren, ranging between eight and eighteen years of age.
