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LAHORE, Pakistan: Young militants unleashed attacks in Pakistan on Thursday that left 40 people dead, storming police offices in Lahore and bombing targets in the northwest to escalate 11 days of carnage.
The coordinated assaults underscored the power of armed radicals to strike in the heart of Pakistan, and the weakness of poorly equipped security forces, despite promises of a new offensive against the Taliban.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led fight against terrorism, is reeling from two years of Taliban-linked attacks that have escalated such that over 160 people have been killed since October 5.
Minutes apart, between 9:00 am and 10:00 am, gunmen armed with suicide vests and grenades stormed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) branch in Lahore as well as a police training school and a commando academy on the city outskirts.
"They were very young - 19 to 20 years old. Three of them were clean shaven and one had a small beard," Dildar Hussain, a 21-year-old police recruit, told AFP from his hospital bed as he was treated for arm and collar-bone fractures.
The training centre in the suburb of Manawan was previously attacked on March 30, leaving eight police recruits dead. The FIA building in Lahore was also bombed in March 2008, killing 16 people.
Pakistan's weak civilian government said the country faced a new war after a slew of militant attacks in the political heartland of Punjab, away from the insurgent hotbed of the northwest tribal region.
"They are involved in guerrilla war. First they were active in NWFP (North West Frontier Province). Now they are engaged in Punjab. They are terrorists paid to destabilise Pakistan," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters.
Although there was no claim of responsibility, he said suspicion fell on Pakistan's umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) movement, Al-Qaeda and home-grown Islamist groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Muhammad.
Five attackers, including two teenagers, scaled the back wall of the commando academy at Bedian, on the city's outskirts, sparking a three-hour siege before the army announced it was in full control.
Officials said families living in the grounds locked themselves in after gunmen wearing black uniforms besieged the compound, which is thick with bushes and eucalyptus and lies 10 kilometres from the Indian border.
Police officer Mohammad Azfar said that two gunmen who were shot in the head were teenagers and three who blew themselves up were aged about 20. Jahanzeb Khan, a police official, said most of the attackers at Bedian were teenagers.
"One was 15-16 years old. He could not detonate his (suicide) jacket. He also had a packet of dates," Azfar said.
Among the dead, security officials identified 16 police and a civilian, and 10 attackers who were shot dead or blew themselves up.
The government brushed aside criticism that it had no strategy to crush a militant resurgence after the killing of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone attack in August.
"We are improving our capacities. It is true that our forces were not properly equipped for such a situation. We have cut development funds in our budget and diverted funds towards enhancing our capacity," said Malik.
US President Barack Obama on Thursday signed a bill giving 7.5 billion dollars to build schools, roads and democratic institutions in Pakistan as part of a strategy to discredit extremists in the nation and in Afghanistan.
In the northwest town of Kohat, police spokesman Fazal Naeem said 11 people were killed, including three policemen, when a bomber rammed a van into the outer wall of a police station on Thursday.
Later on, a car bomb ripped through a residential building for government employees in Peshawar, killing a child, officials said.
Last Friday, at least 52 civilians were killed when a suicide bomber blew up his car in a packed market in the same city.
The following day, Taliban-linked gunmen besieged army headquarters near Islamabad leaving 23 people dead, while 39 hostages were freed by commando troops.
Speculation has intensified that the military is about to launch a ground offensive into the militant stronghold of South Warizistan, where warplanes pounded targets killing 27 people on Thursday, security officials said.
Before dawn, a US drone missile attack on a suspected militant hideout in remote North Waziristan killed at least four people, officials said. - AFP/de
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