Pakistan City of Lahore Once Again Under Terrorist Attack

A police Academy in Lahore has been under siege for more than six hours. Reports say 40 people dead as gunmen hold hostages in Academy

There was confusion outside the Manawan police training academy in Lahore, Pakistan, for at least 90 minutes after the gunmen stormed the place. Some kind of coherent response developed only later, with elite police commando units, the paramilitary rangers as well as army troops surrounding the compound. Policemen interviewed by TV crews on the spot said the attack came during the morning parade hour when more than 800 trainees were out, all unarmed. The militants, dressed in police uniforms entered the sprawling compound, apparently by scaling the boundary wall, and threw grenades at the parading trainees. The assault, which underscores the growing threat that militancy poses to the U.S.-allied, nuclear-armed country, came less than a month after an ambush on Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team in the heart of Lahore. Soldiers and other security forces battled gunmen for hours after the initial assault on the outskirts of the city in scenes reminiscent of last November's militant siege on the Indian city of Mumbai. Television footage showed armoured vehicles entering the compound after the early morning attack. Some police tried to escape by crawling on their hands and knees around the bodies of fallen officers. Six hours after the initial assault, police captured one of the suspected gunmen, dragging him to a field outside the academy and kicking him. Soon afterward, four loud explosions rocked the scene. The attacks pose a major threat to the weak, year-old civilian administration of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, which has been gripped with political turmoil in recent weeks. The Obama administration has warned Pakistan that militancy poses a threat to the nation's very existence, while U.S. officials complain the country's spy agencies still keep ties with some of the insurgent groups. There was immediate speculation that the assault may have been carried out by Lashkar-e-Jangvi, a sectarian group that recruits in southern Punjab but in recent years has moved to South and North Waziristan to train alongside Al Qaeda.About 10 to 14 gunmen held several hundred cadets hostage as police and the attackers exchanged fire inside the center. Armored police vehicles carrying police and rangers drove into gates of the center after the attackers took control and explosions and bursts of heavy gunfire could be heard sporadically. Some of the trainees did manage to escape, one of them with a bullet in his leg. TV cameras peeping from over the boundary wall captured motionless images of five or six policemen, lying on the ground in the parade area. They appeared dead, though some may have been only injured. Some civilians were also hit and injured on the road outside the compound, apparently when the attackers fired in the direction of police security at the gate along the road. Rescue workers have been able to take some of the injured out of the school in armoured personnel carriers Despite growing incidents of militant attacks across the country, the school only had peacetime security in place at the time. Besides, some experts interviewed on TV said the training schools usually had small armouries, with old weapons not fit to counter the modern weapons of the militants. A senior retired police official, Afzal Shigri, said it was not known whether the trainees were new recruits or trained officials on mid-service training. He said new recruits were unlikely to challenge the attackers, but if there were any trained police officers in there, they might find a way to overcome the attackers even without any arms. But defence analyst Lt-Gen (rtd) Talat Masood said that Pakistani policemen did not match the level of physical endurance and motivation that the militants had displayed time and again. When the elite forces arrived 90 minutes later, they were welcomed by the crowd of spectators outside the school with loud chants of Allah-O-Akbar (God is Great).