Gunmen open fire at Pakistan plane, woman killed
Print Edition
HOLED up deep inside a Taliban-friendly neighborhood, gunmen waited patiently for the passenger plane to approach the airport before raising their guns into the night sky and unleashing a hail of bullets to shoot it down.
Although only eight bullets hit the plane, one woman was killed and three crew members were wounded as the Airbus 310 plane carrying 178 passengers from Saudi Arabia landed in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday night.
Airline officials said the gunmen had aimed specifically at the highly flammable fuel tank as they sought to blow up the aircraft, as well as the cockpit, to kill the pilot.
“It would have been a disaster had they hit the fuel tank or cockpit,” said a Pakistan International Airlines official, who declined to be named.
It was the third incident of violence to affect Pakistan’s airports this month as international airlines review the safety of flying to a country with an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.
On June 8, a group of militants stormed Pakistan’s biggest airport in Karachi in a commando-style attack that prompted the army to start bombarding Taliban positions in tribal areas.
In the second incident, a passenger plane carrying an anti-government preacher was diverted at the last minute from Islamabad to the eastern city of Lahore following violent clashes on the ground between his supporters and police.
The Civil Aviation Authority said all flights were suspended after the latest attack, but domestic flights resumed operations yesterday. International flights remained suspended.
Positioned outside the perimeter fence of the airport, militants opened fire on the plane roughly six minutes before it landed at Peshawar’s Bacha Khan International Airport.
The bullets came from the areas of Badhber and Mashukhel near Peshawar, which are considered insecure and full of Taliban supporters.
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