In a show of defiance they travelled - on packed motorbikes, rickety buses, clapped-out vans and on foot - to the scene where 152 people, 133 of them children, were murdered by the Taliban.

As they neared the school gates, soldiers carrying guns patrolled the entrance where the elevated boundary walls have been fitted with steel wire fencing. 

In the deadly attack on December 16 that was condemned across the world, several Taliban attackers wearing bomb vests cut through a wire fence and went from class to class in a killing spree that left 152 dead at the Army Public School in Peshawar. 

Harrowing eyewitness accounts revealed how students were forced to watch as bodies were burned beyond recognition during a three-hour orgy of bloodshed. 

Other survivors told how they played dead while insurgents scoured the school looking for children to shoot, before opening fire indiscriminately - sometimes with smiles on their faces. 

For 16-year-old Shahrukh Khan, who was shot in both legs while pretending to play dead in his school's auditorium, going back was a traumatic experience.

'I have lost 30 of my friends. How will I sit in the empty class, how will I look towards their empty benches?' he told news agency AFP.

'My heart has been broken. All the class fellows I had, have died. Now my heart does not want to attend school,' he said. 

Raheel Sharif, the head of Pakistan's powerful army, made an unannounced visit with his wife, greeting and hugging anxious students dressed in green blazers. 

Parents spoke of having to sit down with their children and mentally prepare them for their return to the murder scene, which now has an airport-style security gate installed at the front.

'He was terrified but we talked him up. We cannot keep him imprisoned between four walls and we must stand against militancy,' Muhammad Zahoor said as he walked his son to the school.

'I want to go to school to see my friends. I will join the army after my schooling and will take revenge,' said Muhammad Zaid, his son.

(dailymail.co.uk)