Militants wearing suicide vests stormed a Pakistani police academy in the southwestern city of Quetta overnight, killing at least 59 people, mostly police cadets and recruits, and waging a ferocious gunbattle with troops that lasted into the early hours of yesterday.
Pakistani officials feared the death toll could rise further, as the four-hours-long siege — one of the deadliest attacks on Pakistan’s security forces in recent years — left 117 wounded, some of them in critical condition.
The assault caught many of the recruits asleep in their dorms and forced cadets and trainers to jump off rooftops and run for their lives to escape the attackers.
Photo: AFP
By midday yesterday, conflicting claims of responsibility emerged. The Islamic State group posted a claim on the group’s media arm, the Arabic-language Aamaq news agency.
It said three Islamic State fighters killed 60 police recruits in Quetta, but the claim was not confirmed by Pakistani officials and the group did not offer any previously unknown details about the assault.
Earlier, a little-known breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban, known as the Hakimullah group, also issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack.
Pakistani officials, doubting the group’s capabilities in staging such a coordinated and spectacular assault, also could not confirm that claim.
While most of the casualties were police cadets and others at the academy, some of the army personnel who responded to the assault were also among those killed, said Shahzada Farhat, police spokesman in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.
The attack in Quetta began at 11:30pm on Monday, Balochistan Minister of Home and Tribal Affairs Sarfraz Bugti said, with the militants shooting and killing a police guard in a watch tower before storming into the academy, located on the outskirts of Quetta.
Balochistan officials had earlier received “intelligence reports that some terrorists have entered the province,” but had no indications about possible targets.
There were also disparate figures as to the number of attackers.
Provincial police chief Ahsan Mahboob said four gunmen were involved in the assault while a military statement later said there were up to six attackers.
About 700 cadets, trainees, instructors and other staff were inside the academy when it was attacked, Bugti said, adding that the gunbattle with the militants lasted for at least four hours.
Once inside the academy grounds, the militants headed straight to the dorms housing the cadets and trainees and opened fire, shooting indiscriminately, Pakistani media said.
Some of the cadets jumped off the rooftops and through windows to try to escape.
After the attack, Pakistani forces tightened security around the academy and Quetta hospitals were the wounded were taken.
Footage aired on local TVG stations showed ambulances rushing out of the main entrance of the academy as fire engines struggled to put out fires set off by the explosions from the attackers’ suicide vests.
Most of those being treated at the city hospitals had gunshot wounds, although some sustained injuries jumping off the rooftop of the hostel housing the cadets to escape the militants.
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