Taliban Attack Kills 30 at Pakistan Air Force Base

Taliban Attack Kills 30 at Pakistan Air Force Base

Ismail Khan, New York Times

18 September 2015

Image: Copright AFP

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Taliban militants shot and killed at least 30 people, including 16 people in a mosque, at an air force base near this city in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, military officials said, in the first major assault on a Pakistani military installation this year.

At least 13 attackers dressed in paramilitary uniforms were killed in an intense firefight at the base, which began at dawn and lasted for at least four and a half hours, said Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a spokesman for the Pakistani Army. Among the dead were 23 members of the Pakistan Air Force, three members of the army, and at least four civilians, the military said.

The Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for the attack at the sprawling Badaber Air Base, saying that 14 militants had taken part. A video released by the group showed a Taliban commander, Omar Mansoor, saying goodbye to fighters said to be the ones who stormed the base.

That commander is believed to have been involved in the massacre of more than 140 people, most of them children, at an army school in Peshawar in December. The attack on Friday was the first major Taliban assault on a Pakistani military base since then.

The Badaber base, about four miles west of Peshawar, was built by the United States in the late 1950s to intercept Soviet communications and as a base for reconnaissance flights. It is now a training and residential facility, according to a security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. “There are residential quarters and a mess for the airmen and a school,” the official said.

General Bajwa, the army spokesman, had said earlier that seven or eight militants had tried to break into the Badaber base and that they had been “contained and surrounded.” But the military later said that 13 attackers had been killed. It released photos of five militants lying in pools of blood at the base.

Pakistani officials said the attack was planned inside neighboring Afghanistan, in the latest round of mutual accusations between the two countries.

General Bajwa, at a news briefing later Friday in Peshawar, said the attack started around 5 a.m. The assailants split into two groups after they entered the base, using rocket launchers and grenades, and targeted the administrative and technical areas of the base.

One group of militants attacked a mosque, officials said. Seven people were killed in a barracks next to the mosque that was used as an ablution area, and 16 people were killed inside the prayer room as people awaited the dawn call to prayer, General Bajwa said.

He said a quick reaction force reached the base within 10 minutes of the attack and successfully engaged the militants.

Pakistan launched a military offensive, “Operation Zarb-e-Azb,” against Taliban militants in the North Waziristan tribal region last year in June. The military claims to have wrested most of the region from the militants, and fighting is continuing in Shawal, a thickly forested area near the Afghan border. But even as the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan has dropped since the offensive began, the attack on Friday underlined the continued threat from militants.

“Such sporadic attempts can take place in a state of war,” General Bajwa said.

Gen. Raheel Sharif, the Pakistani Army chief, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reached Peshawar by afternoon to visit the wounded at a military hospital.

The United States ambassador in Islamabad, Richard G. Olson, condemned the attack as a “senseless and inhumane act that took numerous lives, including those of 16 people inside a mosque while they were praying.”

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.