Gunmen storm Pakistan police academy

30 Mar 2009, 3:38 pm   -   Source: AFP, AP
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Pakistan's paramilitary force rushed to the police academy where gunmen opened fire (AAP)

Pakistan's paramilitary force rushed to the police academy where gunmen opened fire (AAP)

Gunmen stormed a Pakistan police academy, triggering an intense battle with security forces that left at least 20 dead, weeks after a brazen assault on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

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Masked gunmen stormed a Pakistan police academy, unleashing a fierce firefight that has left at least 20 dead, weeks after a brazen assault on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

Armed with grenades and assault rifles, and some of them dressed in police uniform, the attackers shot their way into the camp near Lahore and were continuing to trade fire five hours later with security forces

Television footage showed bodies of policemen lying face down on the parade ground as heavy gunfire continued to rattle round the camp at Manawan outside Pakistan's cultural capital Lahore.

Paramilitary soldiers, armed and wearing flak jackets and helmets, opened fire and fanned out around the perimeter of the site, which was surrounded by scores of police cars and armoured vehicles, an AFP reporter said.

"The number of killed is at least 20," a police official, Amjad Ahmad, told AFP outside the compound, and dozens of wounded were rushed to hospitals.

Other police officers said the number of casualties could rise because of the heavy crossfire between the attackers holed up at the training centre and the paramilitary troops.

There were also television reports of hostages being taken, but that could not be confirmed.

"There were three or four back-to-back blasts from hand grenades and rocket launchers," policeman Mohammad Riaz told private Aaj television from inside a room where he was barricaded with 11 others.

"They directly targeted us. Suddenly there were bodies all around me," one injured policeman said on Geo television from his hospital bed.

Half of attackers dressed in police uniform

Ahmad told AFP there were 10-12 "terrorists." He said half were in police uniform and half in civilian clothes.

He said they were armed with hand grenades and rifles, and killed security guards at a rear entrance.

Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province which includes Lahore, said there were eight to 10 attackers, although other officials cited up to 12.

"Four people started firing, and others went into the building," he added.

Senior police official Azhar Nadeem said they were caught by surprise.

"It was a surprise attack and the initiative was in their hand. Police are reacting to that, and I hope that this stand-off will end soon," Nadeem told Express television.

Attack possibly 'from within'

Interior ministry chief Rehman Malik suggested home-grown terror movements were responsible, listing the groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.

"The nation knows these terrorist organisations," he told Geo television, adding: "The question is - from where they are getting grenades, guns and rocket launchers in such a large number?"
 

Follows attacks on Sri Lankan cricket team, Mumbai

The latest attack came weeks after a March 3 commando-style assault on Sri Lanka's touring cricket team by assailants armed with guns and grenades. They killed eight Pakistanis and wounded seven members of the squad.

Those attackers walked away unhindered by police, and authorities have not announced any high-profile arrest in connection with the assault, which has at least temporarily ended Pakistani chances of hosting international sport.

Officials said that assault bore the hallmarks of the November 2008 attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai, which was blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic militants and killed 165 people.

At Manawan, an AFP reporter saw one helicopter land inside the camp, while another landed a short distance away and a third flew overhead.

Kamran Ali, an official at the Lahore rescue department, said that some 60 wounded policemen had been moved to different hospitals in the city.

Death toll may rise to 60

"We fear that the death toll may rise up to 50 or 60, because the attackers lobbed grenades on groups of policemen," Ali said.

Lahore is Pakistan's second largest city and capital of wheat-bowl Punjab province, which is also the country's political nerve centre.

Extremists opposed to the Pakistan government's decision to side with the United States in its "war on terror" have carried out a spate of bombings and other attacks that have killed nearly 1,700 people in less than two years.

Much of the unrest has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan, where the army has been bogged down fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists.

On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a packed mosque in Jamrud, a town in the northwest, killing around 50 people.

Obama urges terror crackdown

US officials say Pakistan's northwest has become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and have since regrouped to launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.

Such is the scale of extremist violence that US President Barack Obama has placed Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda, tripling US aid to the nuclear-armed nation as part of a new strategy that also commits billions of dollars and thousands more troops to the Afghan war.

Obama called Al-Qaeda and its allies "a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within" and urged Islamabad to demonstrate its commitment to eradicating extremists on its soil.
 

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