Heavily armed militants stormed a Pakistani Air Force base yesterday, sparking clashes that left nine people dead and raised concerns about the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal.
One security official was killed and a plane damaged in a pre-dawn assault at PAF Base Minhas, where suspected Islamists again showed their ability to penetrate a sensitive military site five years into a Taliban insurgency.
There has been a lull in recent attacks, but speculation is now heavy that Pakistan could bow to US demands for an operation against militants in their premier fortress of North Waziristan, in the tribal belt on the Afghan border.
An official denied there were nuclear weapons on the heavily guarded base, but the audacious assault would likely raise further questions in the West about the dangers of Pakistan’s atomic weapons falling into extremists’ hands.
The Pakistani Air Force said seven to eight attackers dressed in military uniforms and armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and suicide vests struck the base, and the adjacent Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, at 2am yesterday.
The complex assembles Mirage and, with Chinese help, JF-17 fighter jets.
“Other miscreants then fired RPGs from outside the base boundary wall,” the air force said, adding that one aircraft had been damaged.
PAF Minhas, in the town of Kamra in Punjab Province, 60km northwest of Islamabad, has been attacked twice before.
Witnesses said the attackers came round the back, exploiting the holiest night of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to remain undetected as long as possible.
“Most of the male residents [from the village at the back] were in mosques for special prayers,” local resident Athar Abbas told Express Television. “I heard three or four explosions, there was heavy gunfire also. It appears that the militants arrived using a village track and climbed over the wall.”
One officer said that he saw flames after waking up for his late-night meal.
“There was an announcement by megaphone for soldiers not to move from the barracks and we were forbidden from going to the area where I saw the fire,” he said.
Special forces and police were scrambled to the scene.
Air force spokesman Tariq Mahmood said eight attackers and one security official had been killed, and the base commander wounded in the shoulder, but by mid-morning still stopped short of confirming that the base was clear.
A helicopter flew overhead and the military said at least two remote-controlled bombs were discovered and destroyed during searches of the base.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Pakistani Taliban have targeted a string of military bases since rising up against the government in July 2007.
In May last year, it took 17 hours to quell an attack on an air base in Karachi claimed by the Taliban, piling embarrassment on the armed forces just three weeks after US troops killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
Yesterday’s attack was the second in weeks to see troops die near the relatively secure capital. Gunmen on July 9 killed seven security personnel who had camped by a river less than 160km southeast of Islamabad.
Pakistan has been on alert for independence day on Tuesday and the Muslim festival of Eid, which begins at the weekend.
On Tuesday, the head of the army, General Ashraf Kayani, used his independence day address to describe the war on terror as “our own war and a just war too” — not a US conflict as often portrayed.
“No state can afford a parallel system of governance and militias,” he said, calling on the nation to stand united or face the risk of a “civil war situation.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not