Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan militants attack an Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing 150 people, 132 of them schoolchildren.

The Pakistani Taliban, officially the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), is a Deobandi jihadist militant group operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border. Formed in 2007 by Baitullah Mehsud, its current leader is Noor Wali Mehsud, who has publicly pledged allegiance to the Taliban ; however the Taliban rejected this allegiance.

On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The terrorists, all of whom were foreign nationals, comprising one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans, entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children, killing 149 people including 132 schoolchildren ranging between eight and eighteen years of age, making it the world's fifth deadliest school massacre. Pakistan launched a rescue operation undertaken by the Pakistan Army's Special Services Group (SSG) special forces, who killed all six terrorists and rescued 960 people. In the long term, the national outrage against the targeted killing of schoolchildren led to Pakistan establishing the National Action Plan to crack down on terrorism.

Peshawar is the capital and largest city of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the sixth most populous city of Pakistan, with a district population of over 4.7 million in the 2023 census. It is situated in the north-west of the country, lying in the Valley of Peshawar. Peshawar is primarily populated by Pashtuns, who comprise the second-largest ethnic group in the country.

Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population as of 2023. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor.