Pakistan police targeted as attacks kill 15

15 Oct 2009 05:04:17 GMT
Source: Reuters
(For full coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan, see [nAFPAK])

By Mubasher Bukhari

LAHORE, Pakistan, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked police offices in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Thursday and a car bomb exploded outside another in the northwest, killing at least 15 people after a week of violence in which more than 100 people died.

The attacks in Lahore in Pakistan's heartland province of Punjab and in Kohat in the northwest followed a pattern of destabilising assaults, including the storming of army headquarters, ahead of an impending military offensive against the Taliban in their south Waziristan stronghold.

Five people were killed when gunmen attacked a regional headquarters of the Pakistani police's Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore.

One of the dead was a gunmen, a police official told reporters, adding that he building had been cleared of attackers.

Gunmen also attacked a police training centre in Lahore but there was no word on casualties. Media had unconfirmed reports of a third attack in the city.

A suicide car-bomber attacked the same FIA building in Lahore in March last year killing 21 people.

Shortly before the attacks in Lahore, a suicide car bomber set off his explosives outside a police station in Kohat killing 10 people, police and military officials said.

"Some school children are among the dead," a policeman at the scene said.

Pakistan's government has said a ground offensive against an estimated 10,000 hard core Taliban is imminent in South Waziristan.

The government says most attacks in the country -- including four major ones since Oct. 5 that killed more than 100 people -- are plotted in South Waziristan on the Afghan border.

A suspected U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles at a house in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, killing four militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The drone fired at a house 3 km (2 miles) north of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, and at least three Afghan Taliban members were among the four dead, the officials said.

"The owner of the house is a member of the Haqqani network," said one of the intelligence officials, referring to veteran Afghan militant commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose men attack foreign forces in much of eastern Afghanistan.

The United States, struggling with an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan and frustrated with Pakistan's failure to eliminate Taliban sanctuaries on its side of the border, stepped up attacks by its drones in September last year.

Hundreds of people, most of them militants but including some civilians, have been killed.

Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a U.S. drone in August. (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan) (Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Nick Macfie)


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Police Training School Manawan attacked twice

Locals want shifting of school for peace of mind

Staff Report

LAHORE: After the second deadly attack on the Police Training School Manawan, residents of nearby localities have demanded that the school should be shifted to some other place.

The citizens told Daily Times that they had become psychological patients due to the constant threat to their lives after another terrorist attack on the school. They urged the chief minister to shut down the school and save the residents.

The city police had established a temporary training school at Manawan in the building of an electric company in 2007. The school is located on GT Road towards Wagha, 11km away to the east. The height of the school boundary wall is almost five feet and it is 300-feet long along GT Road.

There are only two barracks to house recruits in the school. One is a temporary shed and the other is a three-storey building. The building is in shambles, as the government did not carry out any maintenance work for the last 10 years. The Police Department deployed almost 100 training staff, including the drill and teaching instructors to impart basic manual training and teach law to the recruits.

Before the school was set up in the building, it had been lying vacant since the Punjab Road Transport Corporation was dissolved. The building was constructed before Partition in 1947 and had been under the use of an electric company, which was owned by a non-Muslim.

The company was closed after the 1965 war and the building was used as the office of the Punjab Road Transport Corporation until 2007 when a training school was established there. In March, terrorists attacked the school and the operation continued for 12 hours. In that attack, 29 people died, including three terrorists and one civilian. The terrorists struck again and the residents had to suffer once again. The citizens said the school should be shifted to some non-residential area. They said there were two government and many private schools for children near the police training school. Due to these attacks, children were also living under the threat and could not behave normally, they added. The school administration said the police training school should be immediately shifted to some other place for the mental health of the children.

The inhabitants said they had to live like hostages in their own houses during the operation and demanded that the government should address the issue.