ISLAMABAD: Militants attacked an army base in northwest Pakistan in a coordinated assault that resulted in an hours long gun battle that left at least 35 people dead on Saturday, intelligence and security officials said.
At least 13 security personnel, 10 civilians and 12 militants were killed in the early morning attack on the base that included housing for Pakistani military personnel and their families near the town of Serai Naurang in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the officials said.
The raid followed a suicide bombing at a Shiite Muslim mosque elsewhere in the northwest on Friday that killed 24 people, police said. The blast was the latest in a rising number of sectarian attacks in the country.
The Pakistani Taleban claimed responsibility for both attacks. The group has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years and also has sometimes targeted the country’s minority Shiites, whom the militants consider to be heretics.
The Taleban and allied militant groups have stepped up the pace of attacks in Pakistan in recent months, an indication of their strength despite numerous army operations against their strongholds in the northwest.
The raid on the army post in Serai Naurang town of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province began around 3:45 a.m. local time and lasted for several hours, said senior police officer Arif Khan Wazir. The militants were armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, he said.
Nine soldiers and four members of the Frontier Constabulary, a force that polices parts of northwestern Pakistan, were killed in the fighting, two security officials said. They said 12 attackers also died. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
They say militants killed 10 civilians in a nearby house, including three women and three children.
Pakistani Taleban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call from an undisclosed location. He said four suicide bombers were involved in the attack. He said that three of them were killed and the fourth was still resisting as of his call at around 9:20 a.m. local time.
Ahsan said the attack was retaliation for the recent deaths of two Taleban commanders in US drone strikes. He accused the Pakistani army of helping with the attacks. Pakistani officials often criticize drone operations as a violation of the country’s sovereignty, but are known to have assisted some US strikes in the past.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said he saw the bodies of three attackers with their suicide vests intact. Their features suggested they belonged to a group of Uzbek militants allied with the Taleban, he said.
He said other attackers detonated their explosives during the battle with security forces — one inside the house where civilians were killed. He did not say if this caused the civilian deaths.
The attack on the mosque Friday took place in Hangu town, also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The town has experienced previous clashes between the Sunni and Shiite communities that live there.
The Taleban are battling the Pakistani government because of its alliance with the United States and to impose Islamic law in the country. Pakistani’s military has launched operations against the Taleban in many of their sanctuaries in the semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border.
But one major area remains: North Waziristan, the main stronghold for Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants in the country. The army has resisted launching an operation there, despite intense US pressure, for fear of a backlash from militants who so far have directed their attacks against US-led troops in Afghanistan rather than inside Pakistan.
It’s unclear whether the recent surge of attacks in Pakistan will alter the army’s calculation. There have also been calls from some political leaders to hold talks with the Taleban in an attempt to end the violence.
But others believe the Taleban can’t be reasoned with or trusted, and battling them into submission is the only option.
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