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By BABAR DOGAR and MUNIR AHMAD
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 15, 2009 9:23 AM LAHORE, Pakistan -- Teams of gunmen launched coordinated attacks on
three law enforcement facilities in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore
and car bombs hit two other cities Thursday, killing a total of 39
people in an escalating wave of anti-government violence.
The bloodshed, aimed at scuttling a planned offensive into the Taliban
heartland near the Afghan border, highlights the Islamist militants'
ability to carry out sophisticated strikes on heavily fortified
facilities and exposes the failure of the intelligence agencies to
adequately infiltrate the extremist cells. No group immediately claimed responsibility, though suspicion fell on
the Pakistani Taliban who have claimed other recent strikes. The attacks
Thursday also were the latest to underscore the growing threat to
Punjab, the province next to India where the Taliban are believed to
have made inroads and linked up with local insurgent outfits. President Asif Ali Zardari said the bloodshed that has engulfed the
nation over the past 11 days would not deter the government from its
mission to eliminate the violent extremists. "The enemy has started a guerrilla war," Interior Minister Rehman Malik
said. "The whole nation should be united against these handful of
terrorists, and God willing we will defeat them." The wave of violence practically shut down daily life in Lahore. All
government offices were ordered shut, the roads were nearly empty and
major markets were closed. The assaults began about 9 a.m. when a group of gunmen attacked the
Federal Investigation Agency, the national law enforcement body. The attack lasted about 1 1/2 hours and ended with the death of two
assailants, four government employees and a bystander, senior official
Sajjad Bhutta said. Police official Chaudhry Shafiq said one of the dead
wore a suicide vest. A second band of gunman then raided a police training school on the
outskirts of the city, killing nine police officers, officials said.
Police killed one gunmen and the other three blew themselves up. A third team then scaled the back wall of a police commando training
center near the airport, Lahore police chief Pervez Rathore said. The
attackers stood on the roof of a house, shooting at security forces and
throwing grenades, said Lt. Gen. Shafqat Ahmad, the top military officer
in Lahore. Two attackers were slain in the gunbattle and three blew themselves up,
he said. A police nursing assistant and a civilian also died, he said. TV footage showed helicopters in the air over one of the police
facilities and paramilitary forces with rifles and bulletproof vests
taking cover behind trees outside the compound's wall. Officials have warned that Taliban fighters close to the border, Punjabi
militants spread out across the country and foreign al-Qaida operatives
were increasingly joining forces, dramatically increasing the dangers to
Pakistan. Punjab is Pakistan's most populous and powerful province, and
the Taliban claimed recently that they were activating cells there and
elsewhere in the country for assaults. An official at the provincial Punjab government's main intelligence
agency said they had precise information about expected attacks on
security targets and alerted police this week, but the assailants still
managed to strike. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because
he was not authorized to comment on the situation. Despite their reach and influence, the nation's feared spy agencies have
failed to stop the bloody attacks plaguing the country. Kamran Bokhari, an analyst with Stratfor, a U.S.-based global
intelligence firm, said Pakistan needed to penetrate more militant
groups and intercept conversations to prevent attacks, but the task was
complicated in a country so big and populous. "The militants are able to exploit certain things on the ground, like
the anti-American sentiment, which is not just in society - it's also in
the military," he added. In the Taliban-riddled northwest, meanwhile, a suicide car bomb exploded
next to a police station in the Saddar area of Kohat, collapsing half
the building and killing 11 people - three police officers and eight
civilians - Kohat police chief Abdullah Khan said. Early Thursday evening, a bomb exploded in a car outside a housing
complex for government employees in the northwestern city of Peshawar,
killing a 6-year-old boy and wounding nine others, most of them women
and children, said Liaqat Ali Khan, the top police official in the
region. He said an assailant parked the car outside the house and walked
away before remotely detonating the bomb. The U.S. has encouraged Pakistan to take strong action against
insurgents who are using its soil as a base for attacks in Afghanistan,
where U.S. troops are bogged down in an increasingly difficult war. It
has carried out a slew of its own missile strikes in Pakistan's lawless
tribal belt over the past year, killing several top militants. One suspected U.S. missile strike killed four people overnight Thursday
when it hit a compound in an area in North Waziristan tribal region
where members of the militant network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani are
believed to operate, two intelligence officials said. They spoke on
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the
media. Pakistan formally protests the missile strikes as violations of its
sovereignty, but many analysts believe it has a secret deal with the
U.S. allowing them. The Taliban have claimed credit for a wave of attacks that began with an
Oct. 5 strike on the U.N. food agency in Islamabad and included a siege
of the army's headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi that left
23 people dead. The Taliban have warned Pakistan to stop pursuing them in military
operations. The Pakistani army has given no time frame for its expected offensive in
South Waziristan tribal region, but has reportedly already sent two
divisions totaling 28,000 men and blockaded the area. Fearing the looming offensive, about 200,000 people have fled South
Waziristan since August, moving in with relatives or renting homes in
the Tank and Dera Ismail Khan areas, a local government official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk
to the media.
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