Pakistan retakes air base after 16-hour siege

Agencies

Karachi, 24 May 2011: Pakistan troops recaptured a naval air force headquarters on Monday, after a 16-hour battle with Taliban gunmen, who stormed the facility in the most brazen attack since the killing of Osama bin Laden. The terrorists, armed with rockets and explosives, destroyed two US-made surveillance aircraft, killed 13 personnel and injured 14 others.

 

It was the worst assault on a military base since the army headquarters was besieged in October 2009, piling further embarrassment on the armed forces three weeks after Osama bin Laden was found living under their noses.

 

The militants crept into the base in the teeming port city of Karachi from three sides under the cover of night late Sunday, officials said, triggering gunbattles and a series of explosions.

 

Over 16 hours later, officials  confirmed that the attack on the PNS Mehran, a sprawling compound of the Pakistani navy’s air arm, was over. By mid-morning, fire crews had doused towering flames over the base.

 

Flames and smoke belch out from the naval air base after the attack

Pakistani securitymen drive past the wreckage of a gutted aircraft at the naval base in Karachi on Monday

 

Announcing that the attack had been put down “successfully”, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, “There are believed to have been four to six terrorists. Four are confirmed dead. Two are suspected to have run away.”

 

One of the attackers is believed to have blown himself up and three dead bodies were found, the minister said.

 

Malik said the “terrorists” sneaked into the base from three points adjacent to residential areas in the city whose port is a vital hub for NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan.

 

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, who have stepped up attacks to avenge the May 2 death of bin Laden, said the militia had dispatched 15 to 20 suicide bombers equipped to fight for a week. “We had warned after Osama’s martyrdom that we will carry out even bigger attacks,” Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location.