A group of militants armed with automatic weapons and bombs stormed the police headquarters in Pakistan’s largest city Karachi late Friday (Feb 17), sparking a fierce gun battle with security forces that lasted hours and killed at least four people.
The outlawed Pakistani Taliban (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was a “suicide mission” and promising to reveal more details soon.
Provincial government spokesman Murtaza Wahab Siddiqui said three police officers and a paramilitary soldier were killed. Nineteen people were injured, he said on Twitter, describing one in critical condition.
Police officials said eight to 10 attackers in motor vehicles threw grenades at the main gate before storming the multi-story police facility. Siddiqui, a senior leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, said the siege of the police headquarters ended with the deaths of three attackers in the ensuing clashes. However, the fate of the remaining militants is currently unknown.
Security sources said suicide bombers were among the attackers, at least one of whom blew himself up during the clashes.
Irfan Baloch, a senior official with the city police, told reporters that police and paramilitary soldiers responded to the attack together and searched the building floor by floor in pursuit of the attackers.
Friday’s attack in Karachi came more than two weeks after a powerful bomb hit a crowded mosque inside the police headquarters in Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The blast killed nearly 100 people, most of them police officers, and injured many more.
The Pakistani Taliban have denied involvement in the mosque bombing, although a faction of the group has reportedly claimed responsibility.
The Pakistani Taliban, designated by the United States as a global terrorist organization, have carried out bomb and gun attacks in Pakistan almost daily in recent weeks, killing hundreds of people, most of them members of the security forces.
The Pakistani Taliban are a breakaway from and close allies of the Afghan Taliban currently ruling in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan claims that fugitive Pakistani Taliban leaders and commanders are planning terrorist attacks in strongholds on the Afghan side of the border.
Kabul’s Afghan Taliban rulers dismissed Islamabad’s allegations, saying they would not allow any group, including the Pakistani Taliban, to use Afghan soil for cross-border attacks.
