Pakistan airbases attacked in Quetta

Quetta (Pakistan): The Pakistani Taliban on Friday said they were behind attacks on two military airbases in the country’s restive southwest which left 12 militants dead.

Gunmen armed with automatic weapons, grenades and wearing suicide vests tried to storm the Pakistan Air Force’s Samungli airbase and Khalid military airbase, both in the Baluchistan provincial capital Quetta, late on Thursday.

It was the third violent episode at Pakistani air facilities in recent months, raising questions about their security.

Security forces repelled both attacks after more than nine hours of fighting, Sarfaraz Bugti, the home minister of the insurgency-hit province, said, adding that the militants did not penetrate either base.

Two different factions of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attacks and said they were a response to the military’s ongoing assault on militant hideouts in North Waziristan tribal area.

The commander of Fidaeen-i-Islam group Ghalib Mehsud initially claimed responsibility for the attacks.

“The attacks were in revenge to military operation launched against us in North Waziristan. We will launch more and bigger attacks on government and military installations,” Mehsud said.

Later Azam Tariq, chief of TTP's South Waziristan chapter and a former chief spokesman for the umbrella group, also claimed responsibility.

Lieutenant General Naseer Janjua, the top army commander in the region, told reporters that 12 attackers were killed, raising the overnight death toll of nine.

At least 11 security personnel were wounded, Mr Janjua said. He said the attackers, wearing suicide vests, arrived in a Suzuki pickup at the rear of the perimeter of Samungli base adjacent to houses and markets and made a hole in the wall.

“When security forces engaged the attackers and fired bullets, they blew themselves up,” he said. He said that all the attackers appeared to be of Central Asian or Uzbek origin.

Quetta city’s police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that militants first launched an attack on Samungli airbase before targeting Khalid military airbase around an hour later.