Pakistani security forces and American consulate personnel at the scene of several explosions near the consulate in Peshawar on Monday.
By ISMAIL KHAN and SABRINA TAVERNISE
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In the most direct attack on an American facility in Pakistan in years, militants mounted a multipronged assault against the United States Consulate in this northern city on Monday, using a truck bomb, machine guns and rocket launchers, Pakistani and American officials said.
European Pressphoto Agency
Pakistani soldiers watched smoke billowing from the scene of three bomb blasts near the United States consulates in Peshawar on Monday.
At least five attackers, all suicide bombers, failed to breach the outer perimeter of the compound, according to a Pakistani intelligence official, but demolished part of an exterior wall with a large truck bomb that shook the city and sent huge plumes of brown dust and smoke into the sky. At least six Pakistanis were killed and 20 wounded. None of those killed or hurt were Americans.
The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, confirmed the attack, and said it was coordinated, involving “a vehicle suicide bomb and terrorists who were attempting to enter building using grenades and weapons fire.”
Employees of the consulate were evacuated after the attack, according to a Pakistani official. Pakistani television reported that the consulate would be closed on Tuesday, but an embassy spokeswoman could not immediately confirm that.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Azam Tariq, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani military operations in the western tribal areas that border Afghanistan, and for American missile strikes in the area that have killed dozens of militants over the past several months.
The assault was a chilling reminder that the militants are still able to strike at sensitive targets in Pakistan, even as operations by the Pakistani military in Taliban-controlled northern areas have brought a lull in violence over the past three months.
“They are trying to demonstrate that they are still alive and kicking,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst.
A Pakistani militant commander had issued a veiled threat last week to attack sensitive and important installations in Pakistan “to refresh the memories of attack” on an American military base in Khost, Afghanistan, in which seven officers of the Central Intelligence Agency were killed.
Militants have targeted Americans, and even the consulate, in Peshawar in the past, but the commando-style siege that unfolded on Monday was new. Similar tactics were employed last year in attacks against Pakistani targets — police training academies in Lahore, an eastern city, and the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
It was the second strike on Monday. A few hours earlier, a lone suicide bomber detonated his payload at a political ceremony in another northern area, killing 42 people. A police officer tried to overpower the bomber, and was shouting to the crowd of more than 500, when he detonated his payload.
The ceremony — in Dir, the area where several American military personnel were killed earlier this year, in a bomb attack at the opening of a girls’ school — was to celebrate a move in Parliament to rename North-West Frontier Province, and was held by a Pashtun political party, the Awami National Party. More than 100 people were injured.
Officials in Peshawar said that a hit squad of well armed militants attacked the outer security perimeter of the well-fortified consulate from the main intersection that connects Peshawar with the highway to Afghanistan and a military area.
Television reports cited witnesses as saying the attackers wore uniforms of the Pakistani security forces, though officials did not confirm that.
The militants had driven to the outer-security wall in pick up trucks, two intelligence officers and a senior government official said.
The first bomber, they said, had walked towards the entrance while firing from his automatic assault rifle and later blew himself up close to an armored personnel carrier near the check post, they said in separate interviews.
Three other bombers, they said, followed closely, and one of them fired a rocket propelled grenade at the armored personnel carrier that exploded with a big bang but missed its target.
“They used Russian-made Rocket-Propelled Grenade-7,” a senior official from the bomb disposal squad said. “Had it hit the APC, it would have dug a hole in it.”
But as the three bombers moved forward, the vehicle that had brought them to the Consulate blew up, causing a huge explosion that set off a plume of smoke into the sky, the officials said.
Security officials believe that it was this explosion that killed several of the other bombers. Two of the bombers still had live suicide jackets on them and bomb squad officials later defused them. A bomb squad official said the jackets were typical of those made by the Taliban.
One intelligence official said it appeared the bomber sitting inside the vehicle detonated it prematurely, killing the other attackers in the process. The vehicle left a seven feet long and three and half a feet wide crater, said the head of the bomb disposal squad, Sahfqat Malik.
The dead included one police officer and two security guards from the Frontier Corps. Most of those killed or wounded were civilians.
There was no major damage to the consulate building, though the explosions smashed the windshields of several cars parked inside the parking lot, the official said.
The consulate is not isolated, but located in a busy area the main part of the city. Peshawar, which was tormented by almost daily bomb strikes last fall, remains a vulnerable target.
“It is very easily accessible,” Mr. Rizvi said. “From tribal area you can walk right into Peshawar.”
Militants attacked the United States consulate in Karachi in 2002, killing more than 10 people, none of them Americans, and in 2008, militants fired at the top American diplomat in Peshawar as her armored car was leaving her residence for the consulate.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario