Breaking News: Blast inside PAF museum

Updated at: 2239 PST,  Sunday, May 22, 2011  KARACHI: A loud blast has occurred in a guard room of PAF base Faisal located along Sharea Faisal, Geo News reported. Ambulances are also being seen rushing toward the base. Militants attack Karachi military base Several explosions have been heard near the PAF Museum  on Dalmia Road in Karachi. The force of the blasts have   shattered  the windows of surrounding buildings, reports said. Heavy gunfire was also reported after the explosion. An eyewitness said  that the blasts took place near the gate of Faisal Base. “We have four dead and five wounded but the number could rise,”  a security official told Reuters. A large fire and a thick cloud of smoke has also been reported.  Police have sealed the area. “We are trying to check the cause of the blast. I cannot say,” said a senior police official. Another police official said gunfire was also reported from inside the base, Reuters reported. “Several blasts were heard inside, the firing is still continuing,” Aslam Khan, a senior police officer at site told AFP. “It’s a terrorist attack. More than 10 terrorists are inside. They have attacked a navy air station located in a Pakistan Air Force base,”  said provincial home ministry official Sharfuddin Memon. “One of the four aircraft inside the premises has been damaged,” he added.

Taliban 'take revenge' for bin Laden raid

Islamist militants stormed a naval base in the Pakistani city of Karachi late on Sunday, destroying two US-supplied surveillance aircraft, firing rockets and battling commandos sent to subdue them in one of the most brazen attacks in years, officials said.

At least four navy personnel and a paramilitary ranger were killed and 11 security forces were wounded in fighting at the Naval Station Mehran that was still ongoing on Monday morning, navy spokesperson Irfan ul Haq said.


The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was part of their revenge for the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.


It was unclear how many militants were killed or wounded. Between 10 and 15 attackers entered the high-security facility before splitting into smaller groups, setting off explosions and hiding in the sprawling facility, Haq said.


The militants attacked the base from three sides and had control of one building as of Monday morning, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said. Navy helicopters were flying over the base in search of the attackers.

"Because of the presence of several assets on the base, the operation is being carried out in a cautious, smart way," Haq said, referring to military aircraft. "That's why it's taking so long."

Conspiracy theories abound in Karachi


A huge billboard outside Pakistan's naval air force headquarters, which came under sustained attack for hours on Monday, says it all -- "Pakistan Air Force Museum. Unique experience."


Attacks against Pakistan security forces are all too common, but the scale of Monday's operation marked it out as the most audacious since the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces early this month.


Blasts rang out and helicopters hovered above the PNS Mehran base in the commercial hub of Karachi, for hours after more than 20 Pakistani Taliban militants stormed the building with guns and grenades on Sunday night, blowing up at least one aircraft.


The Pakistan Taliban, which is allied with al Qaeda, said the attack was to avenge bin Laden's killing. At least 12 military personnel were killed and 14 wounded.


It was not clear how many of the militants were killed.


"If these people can just enter a military base like this, then how can any Pakistani feel safe?" asked Mazhar Iqbal, 28, engineering company administrator taking a lunch break in the shade outside the complex where a crowd had gathered on a patch of grass to watch journalists set up camp as much as anything.


He said he was from an insecure area of the southern city already infamous as a source of funding for militant groups.


"The government and the army are just corrupt. We need new leaders with a vision for Pakistan."


Karachi has a population of about 18 million people, a volatile mix of rival ethnic groups and political factions, who all to readily resort to violence to settle scores.


Sprawling along the sun-baked coast of the Arabian Sea, the city is also home to Pakistan's main port, financial markets and the central bank.


It is also a transit point for military and other supplies to Afghanistan for the U.S.- and NATO-led anti-insurgency effort there.


QUESTIONS


The navy base is ringed with a concrete wall with about five feet (1.5 metres) of barbed wire on top. An aircraft, armed with rockets, hangs on show on a stand outside.


 Two white paramilitary ranger vehicles had taken up position outside the main gate, each with a machinegun on top and an officer wearing a black cap and camouflage.


 There were about 30 to 40 journalists gathering outside, with seven satellite dishes attached to their trucks. Helicopters buzzed overhead and the main road outside was closed to traffic.


Moin Babar, 35, a technical engineer, said people were trying to understand how the militants made it inside.


"I heard that 15 went in through a sewer," he said.


Kamran Khalil, 48, a civil engineer, suggested, like many others, a conspiracy.


"How can this happen? It's taking them so long to resolve the issue. India or the CIA could have been behind this. They want to show that Pakistan forces are ineffective."


Many in Pakistan were furious with the U.S. operation to kill bin Laden without sharing any intelligence beforehand with Islamabad, which they saw as a severe breach of sovereignty.

"This is all a reaction to American policy




Operation at Karachi naval base ends after more than 13 hrs

Pakistan retakes control of naval base raided by militants

A brazen attack, targeting one of the Pakistan's most well-guarded military installations last night has reportedly, left at least 12 dead and 14 injured. The siege in Karachi's naval air station ended on Monday afternoon after more than 13 hours. The Pakistan Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement, they said it was revenge for Osama bin Laden's killing.


Pakistani security forces on Monday retook control of a naval base in Karachi that had been under siege by militants for 17 hours, but the brazen, commando-style attack renewed disturbing questions about the military's ability to defend sensitive installations, including its nuclear arsenal.

A team of 10 to 15 militants armed with rocket launchers, AK-47s and hand grenades stormed the Mehran Naval Station late Sunday, destroyed two U.S.-supplied maritime surveillance aircraft at the base and then engaged Pakistani navy commandos and soldiers in a pitched firefight that ended late Monday afternoon.


That attack raised serious questions within Pakistani society about the military's capability to defend not just civilians, but also itself from Islamist militant violence, and those doubts would likely be renewed by the assault in Karachi. Even before Sunday, the public's confidence in the military had been shaken by the raid on the Bin Laden and the ease with which U.S. military helicopters were able to slip deep into Pakistani territory undetected.

Moreover, the attack in Karachi would probably raise fears among leaders in Washington and Europe about Pakistan'sability to secure its nuclear arsenal, which is estimated to consist of about 100 nuclear weapons.

"I'm sure there will be concerns around the world about this, there's no doubt about it," said security analyst Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general. "I think Pakistan will have to make certain that anything like this cannot be repeated from the standpoint of nuclear installations."

Masood called the siege in Karachi "a very strong indictment of Pakistan and its security forces and their ability to defend themselves. It will have a very demoralizing effect on the people, because if the security forces are unable to secure themselves and defend themselves, what expectations can the people have that the security forces will be able to defend the population?"

The attack on the Mehran Naval Station in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and its financial capital, began about 10:30 p.m. Sunday. Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the militants, dressed in black, converged on the base from three sides. Behind the base is the Shah Faisal Colony, a poor, run-down neighborhood from which Islamic militants have been arrested in the past.

The militants were able to shoot their way past the base's outer cordon of security guards and get inside, where they split into groups. The two P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft that the militants destroyed were given to the Pakistani navy by the U.S. in June 2010. The aircraft are used for maritime patrol and equipped with special equipment for the detection of submarines.

The Pakistani Taliban had vowed to avenge Bin Laden's killing with attacks on Pakistanis and Americans. Their first major retaliatory strike took place May 13, when twin suicide bombings killed at least 80 paramilitary recruits in the northwest town of Shabqadar. On Friday, a car bomb targeted two U.S. consulate vehicles in the northwest city of Peshawar, killing a Pakistani bystander and slightly injuring Americans inside the cars.

Pakistan military: the enemy within ?

The breach of security at a major Pakistani navy base in the southern city of Karachi has, inevitably, raised questions of complicity, which must be the greatest worry once the night-long siege by the militants ends and the military has finished counting its losses.


That a group of 15 or more attackers armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades could gain access to the inner perimeter of the Mehran base and succeed in blowing up one U.S.-supplied P -3 Orion maritime aircraft and damaging another aircraft, while holding off security forces for more than 12 hours speaks of a large, complex attack that needs some level of help from within. One former Pakistani navy official told a TV channel that the attack appeared to have been planned from a map of facility.



Time magazine’s Omar Wahraich wrote that most analysts believe the success of an apparently well-organized attack on this scale would have required at least some complicity from within the military. In terms of the sheer audacity of the attack, this one is similar to the Oct. 10, 2009 attack on the Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, in which militants penetrated the heavily guarded installation and held several senior and junior officers hostage. The attackers were found to have links to low-ranking military personnel with fundamentalist sympathies, Wahraich notes.



Is the ground starting to shift under the Pakistan military ? First the militants that it nurtured turned against it. such as the Pakistani Taliban which has vowed a war against the state and has claimed responsibility for the Mehran attack. Now, are elements within the military turning against the state as it comes under unprecedented international pressure to roll up the militant networks ?



It’s a crisis the military seems to have been grappling with as far back as 2006 as a recent set of U.S. diplomatic cables reveal. Pakistan’s air force was concerned about radicalisation within its ranks and reported acts of petty sabotage of fighter planes deployed for security operations along the Afghan border. A March 2006 cable from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad quotes then Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Operations, Air Vice Marshal Khalid Chaudhry, as saying that the airmen, most of whom came from villages, were being radicalised by extremist Islamic clerics. The cable also says that Chaudhry claimed “to receive reports monthly of acts of petty sabotage, which he interpreted as an effort by Islamists amongst the enlisted ranks to prevent PAF aircraft from being deployed in support of security operations in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Afghan border.”