Peshawar school massacre video game removed after uproar

A Pakistani video game based on the Taliban school massacre of more than 150 people, mostly children, in the country’s northwest in 2014 was removed Monday after triggering a social media uproar, with critics blasting it as tasteless.

In the game -- Pakistan Army Retribution -- players could act as soldiers shooting the attackers in the school. The game was released on Google Play several weeks ago - around the second anniversary of the attack.

However, soon after its release, social media users lambasted its makers for exploiting the tragedy.

“Bizarre and distasteful,” user Shaheryar Mirza wrote.

“Play the APS game on Android, kill the bad guys, empathy and good taste in one go,” wrote Fasi Zaka, referring to the ArmyPublic School that was targeted in the grisly attack.

The Punjab IT board, which commissioned the game, later said it had withdrawn the video from distribution.

“Thank you for highlighting this mistake,” agency head Umar Saif wrote in a tweet.

On 16 December 2014, seven Taliban attackers wearing bomb vests cut through a wire fence to gain entry to the ArmyPublic School.

They went from class to class, killing 152 people -- 133 of them children -- and injuring more than 120.

All seven gunmen were later killed.

The Taliban said the attack -- the group’s deadliest in Pakistan -- was in response to a government offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area that began earlier that year.

The school killings were condemned across the world. 

Image: An army soldier stands in the Army Public School, which was attacked by Taliban gunmen, in Peshawar. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters