Hundreds of Pakistani students protesting against a French satirical magazine for publishing a controversial caricature stormed a Christian school in the country's northwest and demanded its closure, officials said today.
Four students were injured when the protesters stormed Panel High School for boys in northwestern Bannu city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province yesterday. A local Christian man told PTI on condition of anonymity that about 300 protesters, some of them carrying guns, entered the school and opened its gates.
They vandalised property and demanded that the school be closed, he said. The school, however, remained shut today, even as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa governor Mehtab Abbasi called a meeting of Christian leaders and district administration to discuss the issue. District police officer Abdul Rashid Khan said steps have been taken to avoid any security situation and added that the school will re-open tomorrow.
The students were protesting against a caricature, deemed offensive to Islam, republished by French weekly 'Charlie Hebdo'. The caricatures were republished following a attack by two Islamist gunmen on the magazine's office in Paris in which 12 people were killed.
Last month 150 people, mostly students, were killed when Taliban gunmen attacked an army-run school in the provincial capital Peshawar. Charlie Hebdo caricatures have triggered massive protests in Pakistan. On January 16, at least three people were injured when protesters and police clashed at an anti-Charlie Hebdo stir outside the French consulate in Karachi.
