RAWALPINDI - Insurgents stormed the Pakistani Army headquarters in this garrison city Saturday, killing six soldiers, including two senior officers, security officials said.
Four assailants and a passerby also died in one of the boldest militant attacks carried out in Pakistan, which came a day after a suicide bombing left 53 people dead and injured more than 100 in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.
The standoff continued as intelligence officials said two of the attackers were holding two military officers hostage six hours after the initial raid.
Six militants wearing military uniforms reached the forward security post near the army base. Driving in a white van, they killed or injured the guards and then attacked the second post near the building.
“Six soldiers and four terrorists are dead while five troops are injured,” military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said. “The terrorists were armed with grenades and automatic weapons.”
Police in Rawalpindi - which is adjacent to Pakistan capital Islamabad - said a civilian also died in the shootout, which continued for around 50 minutes.
One intelligence official said at least two insurgents managed to take two army officers hostage at the building of a security office near the second post.
The official, who requested anonymity, said a brigadier and a lieutenant colonel were among the soldiers killed. The military spokesman, however, refuted the claim that the assailants had taken any security personnel hostage.
“Two terrorists are at large but we are not sure where they are hiding,” Abbas said. “The army has cordoned off the area and the search is going on to arrest the two terrorists.”
Earlier, the spokesman said the situation was “completely under control, and all the terrorists who were trying to enter have been killed.”
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the raid and vowed that “such terrorist acts cannot weaken the national resolve to fight the menace of terrorism till its complete elimination,” according to the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
Television footage showed army helicopters flying overhead with snipers on board. Commandos took positions on nearby buildings.
A purported spokesman of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella organisation of more than a dozen terrorist outfits, claimed responsibility in a phone call to Geo TV.
The TTP has its main bases in the lawless South Waziristan tribal district, but it also has a presence across Pakistan through various extremist groups.
“They (rebels) are under siege and surrounded, particularly in South Waziristan, and this attack seems a desperate attempt to release the pressure,” said a former head of the country’s army Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Ashraf Javed Qazi.
Pakistani troops are preparing to conduct a major offensive in South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan.
Anticipating the operation, Islamist insurgents have intensified attacks on civilian, official and foreign targets.
On Friday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car in a busy commercial area of Peshawar. The death toll in the deadly bombing rose to 53 Saturday, medical officer Muslim Khan said by phone from the city.
Seven children and a woman were among those killed in the explosion, which also damaged 30 vehicles and 60 shops in the nearby market. Five days ago, a suicide bomber killed five employees of the UN’s World Food Programme in an attack on its office in Islamabad.
“The terrorists are trying to press the government for negotiations with them,” Qazi said. “They should be eliminated instead.”
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