Peshawar school attack: PM Narendra Modi appeals to schools across India to observe 2 minutes silence

As a mark of solidarity with Pakistan, Prime Minister Modi has appealed to schools across India to observe two minutes of silence, for the "senseless act of unspeakable brutality" in Peshawar.

At least 132 students and nine staff members were killed on Tuesday when Taliban gunmen broke into a school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, in the bloodiest massacre the country has seen for years.

The attack on a military-run high school attended by more than 1,100 people, many of them children of army personnel, struck at the heart of Pakistan's military establishment, an assault certain to enrage the country's powerful army.

Sharing Pakistan’s “pain” in the wake of the "dastardly" terror attack in a Peshawar school, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tonight spoke to his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif on phone offering "deepest condolences and all assistance" in the hour of grief.

Modi told Sharif that "this terrible tragedy has shaken the conscience of the world" and "that this moment of shared pain and mourning is also a call for our two countries and all those who believe in humanity to join hands to decisively and comprehensively defeat terrorism so that the children in Pakistan, India and elsewhere do not have to face a future darkened by the lengthening shadow of terrorism."