Terrorists attack Police Training College in Quetta

 

At least 60 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed a Pakistani police training academy in the southwestern city of Quetta and took hostages, government officials said on Tuesday.

 

More than 200 police trainees were stationed at the facility when the attack occurred late on Monday, officials said. Some cadets were taken hostage during the attack, which lasted five hours. Most of the dead were police cadets.

Terrorists attack Police Training College in Quetta

“Militants came directly into our barrack. They just barged in and started firing point blank. We started screaming and running around in the barrack,” one cadet who survived told local media.

 

Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital, said the gunmen attacked a dormitory inside the training facility while cadets rested and slept.

 

“Two attackers blew up themselves while a third one was shot in the head by security men,” Bugti said. Earlier officials said there were five to six gunmen.

 

A Reuters photographer at the scene said authorities carried out the body of a teenaged boy who they said was one of the attackers and had been shot dead by security forces.

 

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but one of the top military commanders in Baluchistan, General Sher Afgun, told media that calls intercepted between the attackers and their handlers suggested they were from the sectarian Sunni militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).

Terrorists attack Police Training College in Quetta

“We came to know from the communication intercepts that there were three militants who were getting instructions from Afghanistan,” Afgun told media, adding that the Al Alami cell of LeJ was behind the attack.

 

LeJ, whose roots are in the heartland Punjab province, has a history of carrying out sectarian attacks in Baluchistan, particularly against the minority Hazara Shias. Pakistan has previously acussed LeJ of colluding with al Qaeda.

 

Authorities launched a crackdown against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi last year, particularly in Punjab province. In a major blow to the organisation, Malik Ishaq, the group’s leader, was killed in July 2015 alongside 13 other members of the central leadership in what police say was a failed escape attempt.

 

A home ministry official said it was unclear what motive the group would have in attacking the police academy.

Terrorists attack Police Training College in Quetta

“Two, three days ago we had intelligence reports of a possible attack in Quetta city, that is why security was beefed up in Quetta, but they struck at police training college,” Sanaullah Zehri, chief minister of Baluchistan, told the  Geo TV channel.

 

 

 

 

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