Pakistan goes on high alert
PM AND ARMY CHIEF RUSH TO QUETTA AFTER TERROR ATTACK ON POLICE ACADEMY KILLS 61
Pakistan was reeling yesterday as heavily armed terrorists wearing suicide vests stormed a police academy in Quetta, killing at least 61 people.
The attack, carried out by three terrorists wielding guns and explosives, also wounded more than 140 mostly cadets at the college in the capital of the restive province of Balochistan.
The assault showed that terrorist groups remain a serious threat for the Pakistani military and security forces. As the country witnessed the latest attack, security forces were put on high alert across Pakistan.
Al Alimi faction of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi militant group claimed responsibility for the attack. Separately, the Daesh terror group also claimed they carried out the attack.
The Amaq news agency, which acts as a news wire for Daesh, posted a picture of three men holding guns and wearing ammunition vests who it said were the attackers.
Daesh had also claimed responsibility for the last major attack in the Quetta area, an August suicide bombing at a hospital in the city that killed dozens of lawyers.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Raheel Sharif later flew to Quetta for a high-level security meeting. The Obama administration condemned the “cowardly attack.”
“The United States stands with the people of Pakistan and reiterates our commitment to support the government of Pakistan in its efforts to end the scourge of terrorism and violent extremism and to promote peace, security and stability in the region,” said a White House spokesman.
Analysts say Daesh clearly has a presence in Pakistan and there is growing evidence that some local groups are working with it.
Balochistan is a key region for China’s ambitious $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) infrastructure project linking its western province of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.
Security problems have mired CPEC in the past with numerous attacks, but China has said it is confident the Pakistani military is in control.
Sixty cadets were killed and more than 100 injured in a terrorist attack overnight on a police training centre in Quetta, capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, authorities said yesterday.
Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti told the media in Quetta that three heavily armed suicide attackers broke into the training centre on Monday night. Two blew themselves up while the third was shot dead by security forces in an operation lasting three hours, Bugti said.
The assailants reportedly entered the complex through the front gate after killing the guard. “I saw three men in camouflage, whose faces were hidden, carrying Kalashnikovs,” one cadet told reporters. “They started firing and entered the dormitory but I managed to escape over a wall.”
According to state-run radio, Inspector General of Frontier Corps Balochistan Major-General Sher Afgan said the attackers belonged to banned Lashkare-Jhangvi Al Alami (LeJ) group. An emailed claim from the Pakistani Taliban, which shares close ties with LeJ, backed that assertion. “This attack was carried (on the instructions of) Mullah Daud Mansour, close ally of Hakimullah Mehsud and head of Pakistani Taliban in Karachi,” it said, adding four fighters took part.
The Daesh also made a claim via Amaq, its affiliated news agency, and released a picture of what it said were the three attackers.
“Overall security situation of the country had improved and terrorism-related incidents had decreased, but a single incident like the one in Quetta wiped off the months of hard work by security agencies. Justice has just become a mere slogan for Pakistan as people are sick and tired of picking up bodies of their loved ones,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said.
Imran Khan, Chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf said such attacks are the result of lack of proper implementation of National Action Plan to curb terrorism and to break the nexus between corruption and terrorism.