By IANS,
Lahore : Terrorists armed with machine guns and grenades Monday stormed a police training centre on the outskirts of this Pakistani city, killing at least 22 trainees and injuring dozens more. The attackers took scores of trainees hostage as security personnel laid siege to the sprawling complex.
Helicopters hovered overhead as crack assault teams and snipers took up positions at the Matawan police training centre that is located a few kilometres from the Wagah border. About 850 men were reportedly in the complex when the terrorists struck.
The Lahore district police control room said 22 people had died, while The News reported that “at least 25 people have been killed and more than 90 injured,” The News reported.
Two militants have also been killed, another report quoting the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers said.
Geo TV reported that an armed man who was walking towards helicopters that had landed in a village close to the police complex was arrested. Two hand grenades were recovered from him.
Eyewitness accounts put the number of attackers at between 10 and 12. At least eight explosions were heard.
The incident occurred at 7.20 a.m. as the trainees were participating in the morning parade.
“A grenade was lobbed at the parade ground from outside. Then, seven-eight more grenades were thrown. They (the attackers) 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 complex. The terrorists also fired at the helicopters circling overhead to identify their positions.
Television footage showed bodies of policemen on the parade ground while some crawled on their hands and knees to escape the firing.
The attack comes close on the heels of the March 3 terror strike on the Sri Lankan cricket team 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 Mumbai carnage that left more than 170 people dead.
“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,” Malik said.
Pakistan had been hit by a “wave of terrorism”, he said, adding the attackers were trained and had “used terror as a weapon”.
Malik also admitted that the police training centre was not secure and said that its buildings were not designed to cope with terror strikes. “New buildings will have enhanced security.”
DPA quoted Mushtaq Sukhera, a senior police officer, as saying that the “terrorists had taken positions inside the training centre and elite squads had been summoned 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 deflating its tyres with heavy gunfire.
Security forces had difficulty in identifying the attackers as they were wearing blue and khaki police uniforms, the DPA report said.