IS says its fighters killed police cadets
Print Edition
MIDDLE East-based Islamic State said yesterday that fighters loyal to its movement attacked a police training college in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, in a raid officials said killed 59 people and wounded more than 100 others.
Pakistani authorities blamed another militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), for the late-night siege, though the Islamic State claim included photographs of three alleged attackers.
Hundreds of trainees were stationed at the facility when masked gunmen stormed the college on the outskirts of Quetta late on Monday. Some cadets were taken hostage during the raid, which lasted nearly five hours. Most of the dead were cadets.
“Militants came directly into our barrack. They just barged in and started firing point-blank. We started screaming and running around in the barrack,” one police cadet who survived told reporters.
Other cadets spoke of jumping out of windows and cowering under beds as masked gunmen hunted them down. Video footage from inside one of the barracks showed blackened walls and rows of charred beds.
Islamic State’s Amaq news agency published the claim of responsibility, saying three IS fighters “used machine guns and grenades, then blew up their explosive vests in the crowd.”
Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of the province of Baluchistan, whose capital is Quetta, said the gunmen attacked a dormitory in the training facility while cadets rested and slept.
“Two attackers blew up themselves, while a third one was shot in the head by security men,” Bugti said. Earlier, officials had said there were five to six gunmen.
A photographer at the scene said authorities carried out the body of a teenage boy who they said was one of the attackers and had been shot dead by security forces.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Raheel Sharif both traveled to Quetta after the attack and participated in a special security meeting yesterday afternoon, the prime minister’s office said.
One of the top military commanders in Baluchistan, General Sher Afgun, told reporters that calls intercepted between the attackers and their handlers suggested they were from the sectarian Sunni militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).
“We came to know from the communication intercepts that there were three militants who were getting instructions from Afghanistan,” Afgun said, adding that the Al Alami faction of LeJ was behind the attack.
LeJ has a history of carrying out sectarian attacks in Baluchistan.
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