4 convicts hanged

Pakistan yesterday hanged four men linked to the Taliban's massacre of more than 130 schoolchildren, with parents of victims saying they deserved "no forgiveness" as the attack anniversary approached.

The executions, which officials said were carried out yesterday morning at a prison in the northwestern city of Kohat, were the first in connection with the December 16 attack on an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The army has put the final toll at 151 killed, 134 of them children.

A Kohat police official named the militants as Maulvi Abdus Salam, Hazrat Ali, Mujeebur Rehman and Sabeel, alias Yahya. Their role in the massacre has not been made public. The gunmen were all reported killed by security forces.

The attack was Pakistan's deadliest, and shocked and outraged a country already scarred by nearly a decade of extremism. The attack prompted a nationwide crackdown on extremism, with the establishment of military courts and the resumption of capital punishment after a six-year moratorium.