Students, parents mark 1yr since Peshawar school massacre

Pakistani students on Wednesday marked the first anniversary of a Taleban school massacre that left 151 people dead, bearing images of their classmates and teachers slain in the incident which shocked a country already scarred by nearly a decade of attacks.

The assault by nine gunmen on an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which mostly claimed the lives of schoolchildren, was Pakistan's deadliest ever extremist assault.

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Parents of the 134 children killed were greeted by military chief Raheel Sharif at the start of the ceremony at the Army Public School, with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and opposition leader Imran Khan also in attendance.

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Earlier, the parents had visited their children's graves in Peshawar.

Pakistan deployed paramilitary forces and police in major cities for the anniversary.

"Security has been beefed up throughout the country and additional police troops have been deployed in major cities, while paramilitary troops have been deployed at places deemed sensitive," a spokesman for the Interior Ministry told AFP Wednesday without elaborating.

In Peshawar, roads were closed and hundreds of soldiers stood at alert on main junctions early Wednesday ahead of the ceremony.

The area surrounding the school was designated a red zone, with even dignitaries and journalists invited to attend the event having to park at least a mile away and be transported in by the military. An army helicopter hovered overhead.

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Khan called on the nation to stand firm against extremism in honour of the victims of the "unimaginable tragedy".

"A yr later we must honour the memory of APS martyrs & courage of the survivors by strengthening our resolve to defeat terrorists' agenda," he said on Twitter.

Elsewhere on social media, Pakistanis were changing their profile pictures to an image depicting an Army Public School uniform with a bloody bullet hole resembling a poppy, and a caption reading: "Some stains don't wash out".