RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Oct 10, (AFP) - Militants who tried to storm Pakistan's army headquarters Saturday have taken 10 to 15 hostages after a firefight that left six soldiers and four attackers dead, officials said.
At least six insurgents armed with automatic weapons and grenades drove up to the compound and shot their way through one checkpost in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, before being stopped by security forces at a second post.
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| Soldiers take their positions outside the main gate of the Pakistan army headquarters after an attack by armed men in Rawalpindi, on the outskirts of Islamabad. REUTERS |
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Four militants were killed but at least two managed to flee during the fierce firefight, barricading themselves into a security office near the headquarters, as gunship helicopters circled overhead, the military said.
“There are more than two terrorists who have taken some security personnel as hostages. Efforts are under way for their safe recovery,” the military's spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said on state-run television.
“Security forces have surrounded the terrorists. We are trying to recover the hostages safely,” he added.
“According to our assessment the number of hostages is 10 to 15,” Abbas later told private TV channel Geo.
“There could be four to five terrorists inside the building,” he said.
The audacious attack in city adjoining the capital Islamabad unfolded just before midday, when the militants dressed in army uniforms hurled grenades and opened fire at an entrance to the heavily fortified army command centre.
“There were at least six attackers. Four were killed. Two have been traced and surrounded by the troops,” said an official with the army's media wing.
The attack comes amid a surge in insurgent strikes, as analysts say the Islamist Taliban militia try to deter an army offensive into their tribal stronghold along the mountainous border with Afghanistan.
Abbas said in an earlier interview with Geo that the militants were dressed in army uniform and “were armed with sophisticated weapons and grenades.””They came in a van and tried to enter from gate one to gate two in the sensitive area,” he told the TV channel.
“Six soldiers were martyred in the attack,” he added.
A security official requesting anonymity told AFP that a brigadier and a lieutenant-colonel were among the dead.
The firefight came a day after a suicide car bomb killed 52 civilians at a busy market in the northwest city of Peshawar.
Government ministers blamed the suicide attack on the Taliban, who have vowed to avenge the death of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone missile attack in August.
Military officials blamed Saturday's siege on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the militant movement based in the tribal belt and blamed for most the attacks which have killed more than 2,200 people here in two years.
An AFP journalist at the scene of the gunbattle reported that the firefight began just before midday and lasted about an hour and a half, with helicopters carrying the dead militants away after the battle ended.
Witnesses said that the militants hurled hand grenades, with one man saying five explosions rang out amid the gunfire. |
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