Taliban militants stormed a training school Friday in northern Pakistan, leaving at least nine people dead and injuring nearly 40, officials said.
The attackers used a rickshaw and wore burkas to disguise themselves as women, police told CNN. They stormed the Agricultural Training Institute of Peshawar around 10:30 a.m. local time (12:30 a.m. ET), and all three attackers were killed within an hour.
Six of the nine killed at the school were students between the ages of 16 and 21, said Sallahuddin Mehsud, a spokesman for the Pakistan military in Peshawar.
A faction of Tehreek-e-Taliban, or TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Mohammad Khorrasani, a spokesman for the faction.
The faction is led by Mullah Fazlullah, who orders attacks on Pakistan from Afghanistan, according to Pakistani officials.
The Pakistan Taliban claim a long list of violent and deadly assaults on civilians and the military in Pakistan’s mostly ungoverned area along its Afghan border.
The group received the most international publicity for the 2012 attack on Malala Yousafzai and the Peshawar school massacre in December 2014 that left 145 dead, including 132 children.
It has long conducted an insurgency in an attempt to overthrow the Pakistani government and introduce Sharia law.