Gunmen attack police academy in Lahore, kill 8

arsa · #1 Wednesday, April 01, 2009

By Kamran Haider
Reuters
Monday, March 30, 2009
LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Gunmen stormed a police academy in Lahore on Monday, killing at least eight cadets, three days after Washington announced a new strategy to tackle Islamist militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The gunmen battled security forces from inside the buildings for nearly eight hours before commandos seized control of the complex.

Less than a month ago, gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, raising fears an Islamist insurgency on Pakistan's Afghan border was spreading deeper into the country.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik blamed the Pakistani Taliban.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced a new strategy on Friday in which he pledged to tackle al Qaeda and its allies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was expected to seek support for the new strategy at an international conference in the Hague on Tuesday. "We are looking for buy-in, first and foremost," said a senior State Department official.

In Lahore, one witness told Reuters the gunmen attacked from all sides while police recruits were holding their regular morning drill on the parade ground.

The attackers went on to occupy the academy's main building leading to a siege of nearly eight hours, with security forces firing from rooftops of nearby buildings while gunmen returned fire and threw grenades.

A wounded policeman recounted how he jumped from a second floor window to escape, while other cadets were trapped inside.

Commandos retook the building after a joint operation by the army, paramilitary rangers and a crack police squad.

"I can't tell you what I saw and what kind of terror I went through," 19-year-old recruit Zahid Usman told his mother by mobile phone after the violence ended. "They were not human beings. They were not Muslims, they were evil."

Punjab police chief Khawaja Khalid Farooq said eight cadets were killed, though there had been fears the toll would be higher as there were 900 recruits in the academy at the time.

Interior Ministry Secretary Kamal Shah said 89 policemen were wounded. Four of the gunmen were killed and three arrested.

Interior Minister Malik said fighters loyal to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were suspected of carrying out the attack. He also said one of the suspects was an Afghan.

REGIONAL SUPPORT

More than seven years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, Kabul faces a growing insurgency that has also fueled violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Obama, who has accused the administration of former president George W. Bush of becoming distracted by Iraq, has made Afghanistan and Pakistan his top foreign policy priority.

Washington is hoping to enlist support from major players in the region, including Russia, China and India as well as its long-time adversary Iran.

"How can you talk about Afghanistan and exclude one of the countries that's a bordering, neighboring, state?" U.N. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said before the conference in The Hague. "The presence of Iran here is obvious."

Tehran had yet to say who it would send to The Hague, and U.S. officials said Clinton did not plan "substantive" talks with Iranian delegates.

"We hope they will sit down with us all at the table and that the Iranians will come ready, willing and able to help Afghanistan and Pakistan," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood, who was traveling with Clinton to The Hague.

The White House said it would like specifically to see Tehran help in fighting drug trafficking from Afghanistan, pointing to problems with heroin abuse in Iran.

Clinton proposed Tuesday's one-day conference in The Hague, held under U.N. and Dutch auspices. But Wood said she was not going armed with a "shopping list."

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the U.S. strategy was realistic, and that international forces should not expect to leave Afghanistan any time soon.

"This is not President Obama's war in the NATO sense. The allies need to do their part," he said.

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