Gunmen Storm Police Training School in Pakistan

Gunmen Storm Police Training School in Pakistan
By WAQAR GILLANI, SABRINA TAVERNISE and SALMAN MASOOD
copyright by The New York Times
Published: March 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/world/asia/31pstan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


MANAWAN, Pakistan — Elite police forces recaptured a police training school from more than a dozen well-armed gunmen after an eight-hour siege near Lahore on Monday, with reports of the death toll ranging from 10 to 34.

It was the second brazen terrorist attack in tense Punjab Province this year as the authorities confront a tangle of insurgency and political challenges. The fragility of Pakistan has become a priority for the Obama administration along with the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Only weeks ago, in early March, a dozen gunmen in Lahore opened fire on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team and its police escort, killing six police officers and a driver. That assault in the center of the busy provincial capital, a city of nine million people, led to the suspension of international cricket tours to Pakistan, a severe blow to national pride.

On Monday afternoon, after hours of confused explosions and gunfire as security forces battled to retake control of the building, rescue workers began evacuating the wounded in ambulances.

A police commando involved in the operation said three of the gunmen blew themselves up as commandos closed in.

“We announced: Give yourself up,” said Arif Ali, 32, a member of an elite squad of 15 men. “But they chose to kill themselves.”

His team was at the academy at the start of the assault, and said the attackers lobbed at least 10 to 12 grenades. They were armed with light machine guns and pistols and wore the sleeveless padded vests that are commonly used by suicide bombers, he said.

After retaking the building, Pakistani security forces emerged onto its roof and black-clad commandos shouted in jubilation, firing into the air.

Announcing the end of the operation, the senior official at the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, Rehman Malik, said the attack was intended to destabilize Pakistan and illustrated how far "our enemies" had penetrated the country.

The identity of the attackers was not immediately known. Shahid Iqbal, a senior officer commanding some of the forces that retook the school, described the attackers as Afghans, but offered no evidence. He said gunbattles raged in stairwells as the security forces moved in. The attackers threw grenades from upper floors onto police armored vehicles below, he said, and he saw at least one attacker blow himself up.

“One man blasted himself right there,” he said, gesturing toward a window.

Tajamal Hussein, a 20-year-old recruit, said that the attackers spoke with the Saraiki accent of the southern Punjab region of Pakistan and that they shouted: “We have come, O attackers of the Red Mosque, we have come.” The reference was apparently to a bloody, eight-day siege of a militant mosque in Islamabad, in July, 2007, finally ended by the military.

The police academy appeared to have been chosen carefully, and the gunmen struck while hundreds of young recruits were on the parade ground.

The assault began at around 8 a.m. when the gunmen entered the building from a rear entrance, firing indiscriminately and throwing grenades at the parade ground where hundreds of new recruits were starting their morning drill. Adnan Ali had been on night duty with other cadets and was awoken to the sound of gunfire shattering the windows of a sleeping area with mattresses on the floor. Outside, he said in an interview, he saw recruits crawling to safety and joined them to hide under buses parked outside.

Soon afterward, television footage showed bodies of dead policemen littering the ground. Scores of recruits clambered over walls to escape, then crawled along the ground to seek shelter in nearby buildings.

“You can’t even imagine such a situation,” said Saqib Butt, deputy superintendent of Manawan police, as shots rang out behind him. “We were very surprised.”

One police commando said he had personally helped carry into ambulances the bodies of 32 dead police recruits who had been on the parade ground at the time of the assault.

The assault appeared to have been well-planned, an intelligence expert said. “This took many weeks to plan, someone should have smelled this was going to happen,” said Masood Sharif, the former chief of intelligence in Lahore.

Government troops outside the police training school in Lahore.
Scores of police vehicles and ambulances crowded around the high walls of the academy as police rushed to the compound. The attackers fired from the roof of the school as a police helicopter hovered overhead. Police sharpshooters positioned at nearby buildings fired into the compound.

A helicopter ferrying troops to the scene was hit by fire from the attackers, but managed to land safely, according to Dawn television.

A police officer who had been inside the compound, Mohammed Imtiaz Khaliq, said one of the attackers had a short beard and was dressed in traditional Pakistani dress and had said repeatedly in Urdu: “I’m a Muslim.”

The officer said he saw at least 30 people critically wounded after he entered the building through a kitchen area where dozens of police recruits and an instructor were cowering on a floor, some with blood on their clothing.

After the security forces completed their assault, police who entered the building said there were a number of dead bodies inside the compound. It was not immediately clear how high the death toll would climb, or at what stage of the operation people inside the building were killed.

A recruit who identified himself only as Rafique, 20, said he heard an intense blast at the beginning of the regular morning parade. "We ran out immediately. I didn’t come back till the end of the operation," he said, as he stood at the main entrance. The secretary of information for Punjab, Taimur Azmat Usman, said three men, including one carrying hand grenades, had been arrested on the perimeter of the compound on suspicion of helping the attackers inside the building.

There was immediate speculation that the assault may have been carried out by Lashkar-e-Jangvi, a sectarian group that recruits in southern Punjab but in recent years has moved to South and North Waziristan to train alongside Al Qaeda.

A cadet who was on the parade ground at the time of the attack said the gunmen entered the school at about 8 a.m. from the rear. The attackers immediately threw grenades and opened fire, said Amir Farook, 22. “Most of the recruits were present on the parade ground,” Mr. Farook said as he waited for treatment at a Lahore hospital. Contradicting some reports, he said the gunmen were not wearing police uniforms.

Another recruit, Mushammad Raza, 22, said he heard blasts and then saw the attackers throw hand grenades. With a dozen other recruits, he clambered over a wall and crawled across a road before taking shelter in a house for half an hour. Rescue workers then took him to a hospital.

Rizwan Naseer, a doctor in charge of emergency operations, said at least 48 people were being treated at hospitals. Local media cited 90 wounded and said there could be many more casualties. Former police officials told television reporters that security around the school was light, allowing the gunmen to breach the walls easily.

Wounded cadets were carried out of the center on stretchers and some who had escaped by jumping over walls were shown weeping in television footage. The school was believed to have 850 cadets under training. One of them, Khalil Zaman, said the attack had destroyed his ambition to be a police officer. “I will not join the police, not after this,” he said. “I love my life.”

Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah contributed reporting from Islamabad.