Free of landmines and secure behind barrier walls, school playgrounds can be sanctuaries for children looking to play without
fear of death or injury.
Even so, children are still pulled into the
world of adults and exposed to things no
child should have to experience.
INNOCENCE ENDANGERED
Ludo, from the Latin “I play,” is a board
game played with two to four people.
Each player has four tokens and with
each roll of the die, tokens are moved
clockwise around the board. After
going once around the board with a
token, the player can move that token
up their colored path toward the
center. To enter the center, and thus
win the game, a precise roll is required.
The game is common around the world.
Other names for it include Parcheesi,
Sorry!, Aggravation, and Trouble.
On December 16, 2014, in the deadliest
terrorist attack in Pakistan’s history, seven
gunmen stormed the walls of a Pakistan Army
Public School in the city of Peshawar.
Looking to inflict the maximum number
of casualties and bearing automatic weapons,
the gunmen moved purposefully through
the school compound toward the auditorium where students were gathered to begin
first aid training. Many students were gunned
down, while others reportedly were corralled
and forced to watch brutal executions of
teachers and administrators.
An Army Special Forces unit responded in
force to the incident. Over the next few hours
snipers and commandos systematically took
control of the compound, but not before 145
people, 132 of them children, were killed.
Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) — an Islamist militant group based out of the Pakistani tribal
areas bordering Afghanistan — later claimed
responsibility for the attack, explaining it was
in retaliation for a Pakistani military operation against the group in North Waziristan
earlier ѡ