Police Academy In Pakistan Attacked By Gunmen; 48 Dead, 75 Injured

Hospital officials said on Tuesday more than 48 people were killed and 75 injured when gunmen attacked a Pakistani police training academy in the city of Quetta,.

Officials said around 200 trainees were posted at the facility when the attack happened late on Monday. Some of the trainees were taken hostage during five hour incident.

Quetta’s Civil Hospital senior doctor Wasim Beg said that forty-eight bodies have been taken to the hospital.

Most of the dead were police cadets.

Baluchistan province home minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti had confirmed early Tuesday that five to six gunmen had assaulted a dormitory. The structure was within the training facility compound and the attack occurred as cadets rested and slept.

No group directly claimed responsibility for the attack. However, General Sher Afgun, one of the top military commanders in Baluchistan, told media that communications intercepted between the assailants and their handlers hinted they were from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian militant group.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi hails from the heartland Punjab province.

The militant group has a history of conducting sectarian attacks in Baluchistan, specifically against the minority Hazara Shias. It was not certain what purpose the group would have in storming the police academy, a home ministry official said.

The home ministry said military, police and paramilitary personnel arrived at the training center within 20 minutes of the attack. They launched a five-hour operation to find the perpetrators.

Monday night’s attack was the deadliest in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed 70 people in an assault on mourners assembled at a hospital in Quetta in August.

The bomber attacked while a pack of mainly journalists and lawyers crowded into the emergency ward of the hospital to escort the body of a renowned lawyer who had been shot and killed in the city earlier in the day.

Well planned operation

Further, Monday night’s attack seemed well organized. Senior law enforcement agencies said that the attackers had fired at the police facility from five different points.

The assailants then stormed the center’s hostel where about 200 to 250 police recruits were resting, security officials said. Local media reported that there were more than three explosions at the scene.

Quetta has long been viewed as a base for the Afghan Taliban. Their leaders have regularly held meetings there in the past.

Until May this year, Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Afghan Taliban’s new leader, explicitly preached and taught at a mosque outside Quetta for 15 years. Mullah Akhtar Mansour, Akhundzada’s predecessor, was killed by a U.S. drone strike as he travelled to Quetta from the Pakistan-Iran border.

Baluchistan province has seen a lot of violence for nearly a decade now. Separatist fighters launch frequent strikes on security forces and the military hits back.

Militants, especially sectarian groups, have also been involved in campaigns of assassinations and suicide bombings of minority Shias.

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