Terrorists target police centre in Quetta [The Nation] 25 Oct, 2016
Lahore - Around six terrorists yesterday night stormed a police training college in Quetta, prompting a military operation to clear the premises which also houses hundreds of police cadets.Reports said five to six terrorists forced their entry into the hostel from the front gate around 9:30pm and held hostage an unknown number of cadets.
As much as 88 injured were taken to hospitals by 3am as the military commandoes and soldiers of Frontier Constabulary battled with the terrorists to clear the training centre situated at the famous Saryab Road, 20 kilometres to the south of the city.A TV channel quoted security sources as saying that two terrorists had been killed and two of them had blown up themselves.Almost 250 cadets had been got released by SSG commandos. A police cadet named Zubair was martyred, as intermittent exchange of fire was still continuing. Two army helicopters were providing aerial surveillance of the area.Journalists on the ground reported hearing two loud explosions, with one saying the ground shook when the explosion occurred inside the college. The terrorists were said to be carrying AK-47s and grenades.It was not immediately clear how many cadets were in the building at the time of the attack. Provincial home minister Mir Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti said it normally housed around 700 but “recently there was a batch which graduated so I can’t say how many there are now”.“Two attackers entered through the front gate,” SSP Operations Mohammad Iqbal told Dawn News. He added that initial assessments show that the terrorists are in the hostel, and as it is dark, there is trouble in identifying friend from foe.“It’s not clear how many people are inside right now; however, there has been no information about any suicide blast.”An eyewitness speaking to reporters after making a narrow escape said he saw three terrorists directly enter the barracks. “They started firing. We saw them and started screaming. We ran upstairs towards an exit.” He described the terrorists being covered in shawls.The barracks and hostel blocks are situated deep inside the compound, making it hard to hear any sounds of gunshots from the building.Emergency had been declared at all the city hospitals. Most of the injured were being treated at Civil Hospital, of which five sustained bullet wounds, according to hospital sources. Some of the wounded were shifted to the Bolan Medical Complex.The situation was tense in the area and people remained confined to their houses.The Sariab Road, where the police centre is located, is considered to be one of the most sensitive areas of Quetta, the capital of south-western Balochistan province. Militants have been targeting security forces in the area for almost a decade.The training college has come under attack in the past in 2008 and 2006, with attackers firing rockets into the college playground.The attack came a day after terrorists belonging to the Baloch Liberation Army on a motorcycle shot dead two coast guards and a civilian and wounded a shopkeeper in a remote southwest coastal town in the same province.In August, a suicide bombing at a Quetta hospital claimed by the Islamic State group and the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Pakistani Taliban killed 73 people, including many of the city’s lawyer community who had gone there to mourn the fatal shooting of a colleague.Pakistan says intelligence agencies of India and Afghanistan are fanning unrest in Balochistan by helping the rebels and sectarian militant outfits.Balochistan is also a key region for China’s ambitious $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project linking its western province of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.Security problems have mired CPEC in the past with numerous separatist attacks, but China has said it is confident the Pakistani military is in control.Published in The Nation newspaper on 25-Oct-2016
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