A group of militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people as the army hunted for any gunmen still holed up on the campus, police said.
A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 as the army cleared out student hostels and classrooms. A spokesman for the rescue workers said the dead included students, guards, policemen and at least one professor.
Firing had ended after several hours and four militants had been killed, the army said, in an attack that comes a little over a year after Taliban gunmen killed 134 students at a military-run school in nearby Peshawar.
The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said.