A harmless-seeming image that is actually heartbreaking.

This image become uploaded via Taha Munir Paracha, the boy at the left, to his Facebook account. It became at once picked up via the media and extensively circulated.

Why one might wonder. After all, young adults do add photos with pals all the time.

The heartbreaking truth is that the photograph was intended to be a comparison to this one:

This original image become uploaded with the caption, “Friends uplift the soul”.
But then, why would they take a picture within the exact identical positions, carrying the equal garments, but with two friends missing?

At 10:30 am on Tuesday, the 16th of December, 2014, it became simply after recess in Army Public School, Peshawar, and students had amassed inside the auditorium for a lecture on the first useful resource. Others have been in their training as gunmen stormed the auditorium and began firing indiscriminately. It changed into later discovered that they did not intend to take any hostages — what they wanted to become to kill as many children as feasible. Students who tried to escape the auditorium were gunned down.
Below are snippets of what came about to a scholar, 15-year-antique Baqir Jaffri, when they heard the first two photographs.

“Then we heard the 1/3 shot, and our major, Madam Tahira Qazi, who turned into sitting within the front row, became round and requested certainly one of the lecturers to lock the returned door. I grew to become around to see Sir Javed walk up to the door, however earlier than he could lock it, he turned into a hit with the aid of two bullets that came via the glass. He fell down.”
At first, the gunman strolling by way of the aisle wherein Baqir had taken cowl did no longer see him, but he observed his head whilst he grew to become around. The bullet grazed his brow.
The gunman in all likelihood took me for useless and walked on down the aisle, capturing boys and teachers. I saw him shoot our teacher, Ms. Hafsa, three times in the return of the head.
His mom, Fatima was a teacher at that school who did not make it out. His elder brother’s phrases about how he tried to look for his mother are just as gut-wrenching.
I waited at the gate. I was asking every pupil that turned into popping out if he had seen her. But nobody said yes. I rang her range a hundred instances however there was no response. I rang my father who said my brother become secure in the clinic but there was no news of Mama.
Then one of the boys instructed me he saw her running from the team of workers’ room to the auditorium while the firing broke out.

I knew then that she changed into walking for my brother, who turned within the auditorium. And this is wherein she fell because her purse and cellular phone have been determined near the auditorium’s stairs.”

I accept as true with this picture speaks for itself.

Similarly, frightening tales emerged in the aftermath of the attack. Apparently, students had been lined up and requested which ones had dad and mom in the navy. Those who raised their arms have been shot point-blank. The fundamental, Ms. Tahira Qazi, become approached by means of protection forces twice, however, she refused to leave the construction, announcing, “I will go together with the last toddler.” She additionally tried to block the militants, saying, “I am their mother. Talk to me.” Her body turned into found in bushes outdoor the college after the assault.

An 8th-grader, Uzair Ali, tried to protect his pals by means of lying on top of them. His friends survived, but he didn’t. He turned into shot thirteen instances. Fourteen-12 months-old Fahad Hussain become gunned down even as retaining a door open for his classmates to break out. The father of a sufferer stated after the assault that the terrorists had undone his twenty years of efforts in raising his child in twenty minutes.

Six-year vintage Khaula, pictured underneath, becomes the youngest sufferer.

Even at her age, she became enthusiastic about the proper women to training, and her insistence convinced her neighbor to ship his daughter to high school. It becomes her first day at college — also her best day at faculty.

A student, Khan, said about the attack:

I folded my tie and drove it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream. The man with huge boots saved on searching out college students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as nonetheless as I could and closed my eyes, ready to be shot again. My body turned into shivering. I noticed death so close. I will never overlook the black boots drawing close to me — I felt as though it become a loss of life that become drawn near me.

This was one of the worst terrorist assaults in Pakistan’s history, and in the massacre in which Taha Munir Paracha misplaced his friends, of 132 students and 149 general victims to be martyred that day, I locate it simply heartbreaking how they left the spaces in which their friends once stood empty.