‘They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch’

At least 126 people — including dozens of children and teenagers — were slaughtered inside a Pakistan school when Taliban terrorists stormed the campus Tuesday.

Another 122 were injured in the shooting attack on Peshawar's Army Public School and Degree College, the bloodiest in the country in years. Police said at least three explosions went off inside the school. Pakistani rescue workers take out students from an ambulance at a local hospital after they were injured in the shootout at a school under attack by Taliban gunmen on Tuesday.

Pakistani rescue workers take out students from an ambulance at a local hospital after they were injured in the shootout at a school under attack by Taliban gunmen on Tuesday.

Most of the victims were between the ages of 12 and 16, Pervez Khattak, chief minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told CNN.

The brutal terrorists held scores of students and staffers hostage. One gunman burned a teacher alive in front of a class full of kids, a military source told NBC News.

Schoolchildren cross a road Tuesday as they flee Peshawar's Army Public School and Degree College, which was under attack by Taliban gunmen.

"They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch,” the source said. The Taliban took credit for the horrific attack and said it sent in six gunmen wearing suicide vests on a mission to kill the school’s older students. Police have not confirmed the number of gunmen.

A Pakistan military spokesman said six terrorists died inside the school and confirmed the siege is almost over after hours of fighting. Pakistani security killed two and the third blew himself up, witnesses and police said. It's unclear how the other three died.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani Nobel laureate who was just 14 years old when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head while she rode on a school bus, condemned the attack Tuesday.

Rescue workers and family members carry the coffin of a student killed during an attack by Taliban gunmen.

Pakistani men carry an injured school girl to a hospital following an attack by Taliban gunmen on a school in Peshawar Tuesday.

“I am heartbroken by this senseless and cold blooded act of terror in Peshawar that is unfolding before us,” she said in a statement. “Innocent children in their school have no place in horror such as this.”

The attack began Tuesday morning, with the gunmen entering the school — which has students in grades 1-10 — and shooting at random, said police officer Javed Khan.

Army commandos quickly arrived at the scene and exchanged fire with the gunmen, he said. It was not immediately clear whether some or all of the children were killed by the gunmen or in the ensuing battle with Pakistani security forces.

Later, one of the wounded students, Abdullah Jamal, said that he was with a group of eighth, ninth and 10th-graders who were learning first-aid at the academy with a team of Pakistani army medics when the violence began for real.

When the shooting started, Jamal, who was shot in the leg, said nobody knew what was going on in the first few seconds.

"Then I saw children falling down who were crying and screaming. I also fell down. I learned later that I have got a bullet," he said, speaking from his hospital bed.

"All the children had bullet wounds. All the children were bleeding," Jamal added.

Terrified parents searched for their children at a local hospital.

A Pakistani father mourns beside the body of his son at a hospital following an attack by Taliban gunmen.

"My son was in uniform in the morning. He is in a casket now," wailed one parent, Tahir Ali, as he came to the hospital to collect the body of his 14-year-old son Abdullah. "My son was my dream. My dream has been killed."

Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani said the attack was a revenge for the killings of Taliban members at the hands of Pakistani authorities.

With News Wire Services.