By IANS,
Lahore/Islamabad : Pakistan Thursday vowed revenge after the Taliban laid siege to Lahore city with audacious and simultaneous attacks on three police establishments that killed 25 people, including 10 of the attackers. Suicide bombers claimed 11 more lives elsewhere in the country.
An unknown number of armed men – and probably a few women – dressed in military fatigues stormed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) building in a thickly populated area of Lahore, stunning the authorities.
Around the same time, two other groups of terrorists raided the sprawling police training school at Manawan, about 12 km from the Indian border, and the Elite Force training centre, another huge complex.
The attack on the FIA, Pakistan’s federal law enforcement agency, triggered widespread panic because it is situated close to a school where scores of children were in attendance.
Thursday was one of the worst days for Pakistani authorities — even by the country’s own standard of unending bloodletting. In no time, the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which Saturday attacked the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, claimed responsibility for the Lahore mayhem.
The group has vowed to hurt Pakistan to protest US drone attacks on militants near the Afghanistan border and to punish security forces for preparing to crack down on the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziritstan.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, now in China, reacted angrily.
He said that when the terrorists had taken on the Pakistani military and police and openly claimed responsibility, then “certainly we will react at a time when (we have) some strategy”.
The violence spree broke out in Lahore, one of Pakistan’s most vibrant cities, shortly after a suicide bomber stormed a police station and killed 10 people in Kohat town in the northwest.
And just as calm returned to Lahore, an explosion at a school in Peshawar, also in the northwest, killed an eight-year-old child.
In what were well-synchronised strikes, the terrorists barged into the three Lahore targets Thursday firing from their weapons, sparking pitched gun battles. They lobbed grenades at the startled security personnel.
As loud blasts and gunshots were heard, military helicopters hovered above to keep a watch on the terror drama.
After over four hours the military neutralized the terrorists. One was captured.
“The situation is under control and there are no hostages,” Major General Shafqaat Ahmad said at the Elite Force training centre, where the security forces took the maximum time to subdue the terrorists.
In contrast, the terrorists in the FIA building and the police training school were killed quickly.
Ahmad said five terrorists were killed at the Elite Force complex. Police said seven people were killed and three injured in the attack on the FIA building. The dead included two terrorists.
The head of the Rescue 1122 emergency service, Rizwan Naseer, said the total death toll in all three incidents had reached to 25. Among them were 10 terrorists.
Lahore Police Commissioner Khusro Pervez said it was a “multi-directional attack”.
This was the second attack on the police training school this year after a March 30 assault that left several people dead.
Pakistan has been rocked by a string of terror attacks in the last 10 days that have claimed more than 100 lives.
The Lahore attacks come a day after it was announced that Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had ordered that an advisory on tightening security be issued following the assault on the military headquarters.