By IANS,
Lahore : At least 20 police trainees were killed and many injured when a group of terrorists struck at a police training academy here Monday and took dozens of men hostage, authorities said.
Helicopters hovered in the air Monday as crack assault teams took up positions outside the sprawling Matawan police training centre, which is located a few kilometres away from the Wagah border. About 800 men were reportedly in the complex when the terrorists struck.
The terrorists used machine guns and grenades to launch the attack that left 20 dead and 150 injured, Dawn News reported.
Two militants have also been killed, the report quoting Rangers personnel said.
Eyewitness accounts estimate some 10 militants carried out the attack, and at least eight explosions were heard.
The incident took place at 7.20 a.m. as trainees were participating in their morning parade.
“A grenade was lobbed at the parade ground from outside a wall. Then seven-eight more grenades were thrown. They then entered the area and started firing indiscriminately at us. This continued for about 20 minutes,” an injured police trainee told Geo TV.
“We lay low on the ground and crawled towards the main gate. We were rescued from there,” he added.
Security personnel were locked in gun battles with the attackers who were hiding inside various buildings within the police complex.
Television footage showed bodies of policemen on the parade ground while some crawled on their hands and knees to escape the firing. Ambulances rushed to the scene, taking away the wounded.
The attack comes close on the heels of the March 3 terror strike on the Sri Lankan cricket players near Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium that left six security personnel dead.
Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik told Geo TV that the terror strike in Lahore was similar to the Nov 26-29, 2008 carnage in Mumbai that left about 170 people dead.
Last year, nine terrorists from Pakistan were killed and one arrested by the security forces that battled them for 60 hours at several locations, including a busy railway terminus, luxury hotels and a Jewish centre, all in south Mumbai.
While Monday’s attack was going on, Malik said: “This is an attack on the country by forces which do not want to see Pakistan stable. There should be unity at the political level and all levels.”
He said that Pakistan has been hit by a “wave of terrorism”, adding the terrorists were trained and “used terror as a weapon”.
Malik admitted that the police training centre that had been attacked was not secure and said that these buildings were not designed to prevent terror strikes. “New buildings will have enhanced security.”
Mushtaq Sukhera, a senior police officer, was quoted as saying by DPA that the “terrorists had taken positions inside the training centre and the elite squad are called to the scene”.
“Around 850 recruits are normally trained here, but we don’t know exactly how many were inside when the attack took place,” Sukhera said.
Security forces used armoured personnel carriers to move some of the injured policemen out of the centre. The attackers immobilised one armoured vehicle by blowing up its tyres with heavy gunfire.
Security forces had difficulty in identifying the attackers as they were wearing police uniform, the DPA report said.
The terrorists also shot at helicopters circling over the centre to identify their positions.