Pakistan mourns death of 61 in attack on academy
Gunmen shoot up police school’s sleeping quarters
QUETTA // Pakistan was in mourning yesterday after gunmen killed at least 61 people in an assault on a police academy – the deadliest attack on a security centre in the country’s history. Three masked gunmen burst into the sprawling Balochistan Police College near Quetta about 11.10pm on Monday, pretending to be soldiers as they moved through the sleeping quarters of 700 recruits. Gunfire continued for hours.
“They knocked at the locked rooms and told the cadets that they were from the army, and when they opened the doors they fired at them,” said cadet Hikmatullah, 22, from his hospital bed where he was recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
“They came in by jumping over the walls of the academy, which are very low. I ran away from my room and was hit by a bullet. I still managed to flee.”
Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of Balochistan province, said the attackers killed a tower sentry before gaining access to the grounds. A morgue list showed 61 people were killed in the attack, while 118 were wounded.
Maj Gen Sher Afgan, chief of the paramilitary Frontier Corps that led the battle against the gunmen, blamed the attack on the Pakistani Taliban-affiliated Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. He said the fighting lasted three hours.
Yesterday, Pakistan’s top military and intelligence command, including army chief Raheel Sharif, attended a funeral for the victims, whose coffins were carried by soldiers in dress uniform.
Prime minister Nawaz Sharif later flew to Quetta to chair a high-level security meeting. The compound remained sealed while weeping relatives were sent to the main hospital, where citizens rushed to donate blood.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed the attack, which it said was carried out by four fighters.
“This attack was carried out on the instructions of Mullah Daud Mansour, close ally of Hakimullah Mehsud and head of Pakistani Taliban in Karachi,” it said.
The Taliban said the attack was revenge for the death of its fighters outside jails in Punjab province, an apparent reference to the recent surge in killings of Lashkar fighters.
ISIL also claimed the attack, releasing a picture of what it said were the three assailants.
Lashkar officially pledges allegiance to Al Qaeda, ISIL’s rival.
But the dual claims could be evidence of new links that have not been revealed, analysts say.
“Lashkar- e- Jhangvi’s claim seems to carry more weight but ISIL has released photographs of the militants and this link between LeJ and ISIL will be determined in the coming days,” said Amir Rana, director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies think tank. It was the third- deadliest attack of the year in Pakistan, which has been racked by an insurgency since shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.