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Commandos end police siege in Pakistan
Ed Harris30 Mar 2009
Pakistani special forces today overpowered a gang of Islamic miltants who had stormed a police academy. Gun battles and explosions left up to 40 people dead.
More than 20 policeman died during the bloody siege in Pakistan's increasingly lawless eastern province. Eight gunmen were killed, including two who blew themselves up as troops traded gunfire with the militants. The death toll was expected to rise because some bodies remained inside the compound.
"The operation is over," said interior ministry secretary Kamal Shah, adding that 89 policemen were wounded. Six people have been arrested after the co-ordinated assault on the compound in Lahore, the capital of Punjab.
The attack came less than a month after an ambush on Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team in the heart of Lahore and underlined the growing threat posed by militancy to Pakistan. It prompted the country's top civilian security official to say that militant groups were "destabilising the country".
Soldiers and other security forces surrounded the training centre on the outskirts of the city after the attack this morning, exchanging fire in scenes broadcast on TV which echoed last November's terrorist attack on the Indian city of Mumbai.
Security forces battled the gunmen for about eight hours after the storming of the compound, which led to an eight-hour hostage drama. "Some gunmen entered the centre, threw hand grenades and then started firing," said an intelligence agency official. A young cadet with bandaged hands said at a hospital: "It was like doomsday; it was every man for himself. Everybody was trying to race to safety."
One wounded policeman described how the attackers struck while police recruits were having their regular morning drill. "A grenade hit the platoon next to ours ... then there was continuous firing for about 20 minutes," he told reporters from his hospital bed.
Troops cornered several militants on the top floor of a building, where the gunmen were holding about 35 hostages, said Rao Iftikhar, a senior government official in Punjab province.
Armoured vehicles entered the compound while helicopters hovered. Some police tried to escape by crawling around the bodies of fallen colleagues. On the roof, body parts, blood and spent ammunition were strewn about as several police officers, apparently hostages, came out with their hands on their heads. TV channels showed jubilant police shouting praise to God and firing in the air, soon after an intense burst of firing in the academy.
No militant group claimed responsibility but interior ministry security chief Rehman Malik suggested home-grown terrorist movements were responsible, listing Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. "The nation knows these terrorist organisations," he said, adding: "The question is: from where they are getting grenades, guns and rocket launchers in such a large number?"
Islamist militants have launched a campaign of violence to destabilise the Muslim, nuclear-armed nation of 170million people, and its one-year-old civilian government.
US President Barack Obama has put support for President Asif Ali Zardari's government at the centre of a policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Reader views (1)
Pakistan could end up being the starting place of WW3.
If Islamist militants take over the country; and its nuclear weapons; then the West and Russia will have to aim their missiles at Pakistan; because their missiles will be aimed at the West; and Israel for sure.
History always repeats itself; pity some do not learn anything at all from history.
The next World War will not take long; it will all be over in a flash.
- Mickyinlondon, london, 30/03/2009 22:43
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