The attack on a military school in Peshawar by Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers was as brutal and inhumane as it gets.  There have been several reports of a teacher being set on fire in front of her students, and hospitals report that the bodies of dead children are arriving headless.

International Business Times:

Taliban terrorists allegedly burned a teacher alive and made the students watch during their attack on a Pakistan school which left over 130 people dead.

According to a NBC News report, citing an unnamed military official, the terrorists stormed the Army Public school in Peshawar, in north-west Pakistan, and committed the horrific act as well as detonating a suicide bomb which killed a number of students.

"They burnt a teacher in front of the students in a classroom," the unnamed military source told the US TV network.

"They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch."

At least six militants entered the Pakistani school wearing security uniforms, before massacring an estimated 132 people and injuring another 122.

Most of the school's 500 students have been evacuated. The Pakistani army claims to have killed five terrorists and is conducting a search for more, while more hostages are believed to be held inside the school.

Pakistani officials have yet to verify the burning of the teacher, or other reports that some of the bodies of the dead school children are being brought into the hospital headless.

The massacre is going to backfire on the Taliban; the government of Pakistan will crack down with a vengeance.

Now, as Pakistan reels in horror at the bloodshed in a military-run high school in Peshawar city on Tuesday, pressure will mount on politicians and generals who have long been tolerant of militants they counted as strategic assets in their rivalry with India and jostle for influence in Afghanistan.

"There have been national leaders who been apologetic about the Taliban," said Sherry Rehman, a former envoy to Washington and prominent opposition politician. "People will have to stop equivocating and come together in the face of national tragedy."

Outrage over the killing of so many children is likely to seriously erode sympathy for militants in a country where many people have long been suspicious of the U.S.-led "war on terror", and spur the army to intensify an offensive it launched this year on havens in mountains along the Afghan border.

Army chief Raheel Sharif has already signaled that retaliation would follow. On Wednesday, Mubasher Lucman, a prominent host on the ARY news channel, Tweeted: "Enough time already. Tell Air Chief to initiate carpet bombing".

"The Taliban may be trying to slacken the resolve of the military by suggesting that there could be a tremendous human costs to the military offensive and create public pressure on the military to back off from this offensive," said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

"But it may actually ricochet on them," said Nasr, formerly a State Department adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Pakistani intelligence organization, the ISI, has been playing pattycake with the terrorists for more than a decade, turning a blind eye to their actions in the disputed region of Kashmir and, in some cases, actively assisting them in their cross-border raids into Afghanistan.  The civilian government tacitly supported this strategy because it gave them leverage with India and the Afghan government.

Now, the ISI creation has turned on its master and inflicted a painful wound.  Pakistan won't soon forget this brutal attack, and the army is going to make sure the Taliban doesn't forget it, either.