Quetta shuts down, mourns killing of 61 police cadets
quetta — Quetta was completely shut down on Wednesday following a militant rampage at a police academy the day before while families buried 60 police cadets and an army officer killed in the attack — one of the deadliest targeting Pakistani security forces in recent years.
The brazen assault in which unarmed cadets and police trainees — many of whom were asleep in their dorms when the attack started — jumped from windows and rooftops, fleeing for their lives, saw troops battle the attackers for four hours before the siege was over.
The academy houses about 700 cadets, nearly all in their early 20s. Local Quetta hospitals were treating 123 wounded from the attack.
In conflicting claims, a Daesh affiliate and a Taleban splinter group both said they were behind the terrorist attack in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.
But Pakistani officials later said they intercepted communication between the attackers and their purported handlers across the border in Afghanistan, blaming an Al Qaeda- and Taleban-linked group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al Almi, for the assault.
Quetta trade leader, Abdur Rahim Kakar, said all businesses and offices were closed in the city on Wednesday, while marketplaces were deserted.
Law offices and business communities elsewhere in some Pakistani cities also closed doors in solidarity. Pakistan’s flag was lowered at halfmast at government buildings and other official institutions.
Kakar said there were not enough ambulances and funeral vehicles to transport all the bodies home, so some families were forces to take away their dead on top of passenger vans.
Naseer Khan Tareen, a merchant, said the government was not doing enough to prevent large militant attacks, citing an August suicide bombing that killed more than 70 at a gathering of lawyers on the grounds of a government-run hospital in Quetta. “We had an incident
We had an incident hardly three months ago where 70 lawyers were killed and yet we have another one
Naseer Khan Tareen, a merchant
hardly three months ago where 70 lawyers were killed and yet we have another one,” he said. “There can’t be any bigger tragedy.”
Forensic teams and investigators were combing the academy on Wednesday to collect evidence, said Quetta police spokesman Shahzada Farhat. According to authorities, three attackers with suicide vests had stormed the academy — two blew themselves up with explosive vests and the third was killed by army gunfire.
Farhat said he had no new information to offer about the attackers or their nationalities. Daesh group’s media arm, the Arabiclanguage Aamaq news agency, had posted photographs of the alleged bombers to support its claim of responsibility. The group is based in Syria and Iraq. —