PESHAWAR: Al-Qaeda’s regional branch on Sunday said its hearts were “bursting with pain” over the Taliban’s massacre at an army-run Peshawar school and urged the militants to target only security forces.

“Our hearts are bursting with pain and grief over this incident,” Osama Mehmood, spokesman for Al-Qaeda South Asia chapter said in a four-page emailed statement.

“The guns that we have taken up against Allah’s enemy America and its pet rulers and slave army should not be aimed towards children, women and our Muslim people,” he added. Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the creation of the new South Asia branch in September to “wage jihad” in Myanmar, Bangladesh and India.—AFP