Militants unleashed coordinated attacks on Pakistani police in which 39 people died yesterday, storming offices in Lahore and bombing a northwest station to escalate 11 days of carnage.
In response Pakistani warplanes bombed suspected Taliban outposts in the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan in which security officials said 27 people died on Thursday.
The simultaneous assaults underscored the power of armed radicals to strike in the heart of Pakistan and the weakness of poorly equipped security forces, despite promises of a new offensive against the Taliban near the Afghan border.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks on Lahore on Thursday morning.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan and is a key ally in the US-led fight against terror, is reeling from Taliban-linked attacks in which more than 160 people have died since October 5.
Minutes apart, between 9:00 am and 10:00 am, gunmen armed with suicide vests and grenades stormed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) branch in Lahore, plus a police training school and a commando academy on the city’s outskirts.
The training centre in suburb Manawan was previously attacked on March 30 in a militant raid that killed eight police recruits. And the FIA building in Lahore was bombed in March 2008, killing 16 people.
Pakistan’s weak civilian government said the country was facing a new war after a slew of militant attacks in the country’s political heartland of Punjab, away from the hotbed of insurgency in the northwest tribal region.
“They are involved in guerrilla war. First they were active in NWFP (North West Frontier Province), now they are engaged in Punjab. They are terrorists paid to destabilise Pakistan,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters.
Even after the gunmen were overpowered, police warned of threats of more attacks in Lahore, the country’s cultural capital where a string of high-profile militant attacks have taken place since March.
“A total of 14 people were killed in Manawan, including four terrorists. Nine were police officials and one was unidentified,” Lahore city police chief Pervez Rathor told AFP.
“Search operations are going on in different parts of the city. There are threats of more attacks, he said.
Security officials said 16 police and a civilian were killed and 10 attackers were shot dead or blew themselves up around Lahore.
Five attackers, including at least one teenager, scaled the back wall of the commando academy at Bedian, sparking a siege that dragged on nearly four hours before the army announced it was in full control, officials said.
“The situation inside Bedian centre is completely under control,” said Major General Shafqat Ahmad, the top military commander in the eastern city.
Officials said families who lived on the academy grounds locked themselves in to escape the crossfire.
Police officer Mohammad Azfar said one young gunman was shot in the head, and eight grenades were found on his body.
“He was 15-16 years old. He could not detonate his (suicide) jacket. He also had a packet of dates,” Azfar said.
Ahmad insisted that Pakistani forces had “averted major catastrophe”, despite criticism that the militants have now bounced back after the killing of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack in August.
In Peshawar, a bomb on Thursday ripped through a residential building used by government employees in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, killing one child, officials said.
“It was a bomb blast in a residential building for government officials,” Liaquat Ali, Peshawar city police chief, told AFP.
One child was killed and six people wounded said Doctor Mehboob Ali at the main government-run hospital in the city.
Meanwhile, the military has stepped up bombing raids in the region, where tens of thousands of civilians have fled a feared ground offensive that has been hotly anticipated for months but has so far failed to materialise.
“There was heavy bombing today. Twenty-seven people were killed, it was not clear how many were militants,” one security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The dead were killed in three separate locations, he added.
Other security official quoted the same death toll, although independent confirmation and the identities of the dead were not immediately clear.
“We are targeting militant hideouts with jet fighters and helicopter gunships in the first phase of an operation in South Waziristan,” said Tariq Hayat, a top government official responsible for Pakistan’s tribal belt.
“There are some 1,500 foreign militants including Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs and Sudanese in South Waziristan,” he added.
US President Barack Obama is poised to sign a bill giving 7.5 billion dollars to build schools, roads and democratic institutions in Pakistan as part of a strategy to discredit extremists in the nation and in Afghanistan.
In the northwest town of Kohat near Peshawar, police spokesman Fazal Naeem said 11 people were killed, including three policemen, Thursday.
“It was a van suicide attack,” senior police official Abdullah Khan told AFP. Police said the bomber rammed his vehicle into the outer wall of the police station in Kohat and that the building was badly damaged.
Last Friday, at least 52 civilians were killed when a suicide bomber blew up his car in a packed market in Peshawar.
The following day, Taliban-linked gunmen staged an audacious raid on army headquarters near Islamabad with 23 people killed in a day-long siege that also saw 39 hostages freed by commando troops.
Speculation has intensified that the military is about to launch a ground offensive into the militant stronghold of South Warizistan.
Tens of thousands of people have fled and warplanes pounded suspected Taliban targets in the region Thursday, security officials and witnesses said.
Before dawn, a US drone missile attack on a suspected militant hideout in remote North Waziristan killed at least four people, officials said
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