Jump to content

Pakistani Taliban Prison Attack Frees Hundreds Of Inmates


dalsingh101

Recommended Posts

Pakistani Taliban prison attack frees hundreds of inmates

Police say known terrorists are among hundreds set loose in daring raid by 70 militants on Dera Ismail Khan jail

Hundreds of prisoners have been freed by Islamists in Pakistan after a spectacular assault by extremists on a jail in the western city of Dera Ismail Khan.

The attack, at around 11.30pm on Monday, involved one large bomb – so loud it rattled windows miles away – to blow a hole in the jail's walls, followed by a mortar bombardment.

Around 70 gunmen, many dressed in police uniforms, then rushed through the gaps, throwing grenades and firing rocket-propelled grenades, killing six policemen and opening cells to free around 250 prisoners. Authorities said these included 24 wanted terrorists.

The attack, which came on the eve of voting for a new president in the troubled south Asian state, underlines once again the weakness of the Pakistani state and the inability of the country's law and order agencies to maintain security.

One strike last week targeted an office of the main spy agency, the ISI, while another killed more than 50 Shia Muslims. Six Shia Muslim prisoners – the vast majority of Pakistanis are Sunni – were killed in Monday night's assault.

The jail in Dera Ismail Khan, which lies next to Pakistan's restive semi-autonomous tribal areas, was heavily guarded. Many of the high-profile prisoners who escaped belong to the violent sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jangvi. A curfew has now been imposed and army units deployed.

One policeman said he had been rushing to the scene when he was challenged by two young boys holding rifles. "They told me to stop," Gul Mohammed said. "I told them I am a policeman, and that's when they opened fire." He added that he was shot three times.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, a coalition of local extremist groups, claimed responsibility for the attack. Eight of the attackers wore suicide vests, and two detonated their explosives, the spokesman told Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The Pakistani Taliban have also claimed responsibility for the two attacks earlier this week and for the shootings of 10 mountaineers at base camp on a famous peak, Nanga Parbat, last month.

Hopes that the election of a new government, led by third-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, might lead to less violence, have been dashed. Some analysts have suggested that the ambivalent position taken towards the Taliban by some high-profile Pakistani politicians might have emboldened them.

Imran Khan, the former cricketer turned conservative prime ministerial candidate, has said that carrying out negotiations with the extremists is the only way to end violence in the restive western border zones. The attack also demonstrates the close links between the Pakistani Taliban and local sectarian groups.

View Pakistan prison attack, July 2013 in a larger map

At least eight attackers disguised in police uniforms entered the prison on motorcycles adorned with Taliban flags and used megaphones to call out the names of specific prisoners for whom they were looking, local media reported. As the gun battle unfolded, gunmen took over a nearby house and hospital, holding the residents hostage as they fired on police from the rooftops and laid ambushes for reinforcements.

A curfew has been imposed in Dera Ismail Khan and the nearby town of Tank while the search goes on, said Amir Khattak, Dera Ismail Khan's deputy commissioner.

Officials received a letter threatening an attack on the prison, but they didn't expect it so soon, said Khalid Abbas, head of the prison department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Mushtaq Jadoon, Dera Ismail Khan's civil commissioner, said the 253 escaped prisoners included 30 top militants and six people on death row. In April 2012, Taliban militants armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades battled their way into a prison in the city of Bannu in north-west Pakistan, freeing close to 400 prisoners, including at least 20 described by police as very dangerous insurgents.

After that attack, militants said they had been helped by insiders in the security services. An inquiry later found there were far fewer guards on duty than there should have been and those who were there lacked sufficient ammunition. One of the militants freed in that attack, Adnan Rasheed, recently gained attention by writing a letter to the teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban last year in an attempt to kill her. Rasheed said he wished the attack had not happened, but told Malala that she was targeted for speaking ill of the Taliban.

Reuters has reported that Rasheed was the mastermind behind this latest attack

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I tell you. The War On Terror has proper blown up in the coalition's face. Totally out of control.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^^

Making millions giving speeches apparently.

Blair still has the gall to show his face in the British media occasionally. When you read the comments underneath his articles it shows that the indigenous are not a happy bunch.

Shame how when many of them thought they were going to make a financial killing off the middle east, they practically worshiped him. Now that it's clearly gone irrevocably pear shaped, they can't stand to see his face.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did you guys hear?

First the above mass prison break in Afghanistan, then another mass prison break took place the next day in Iraq. A lot of 'leaders' were sprung.

Do you think that the two breaks are connected or just coincidence?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I tell you. The War On Terror has proper blown up in the coalition's face. Totally out of control.

You wait till NATO leave Afghanistan and the army and police (trained by the West) have to decide whether to fight the Taliban or just take their orders from them instead.

Did you guys hear?

First the above mass prison break in Afghanistan, then another mass prison break took place the next day in Iraq. A lot of 'leaders' were sprung.

Do you think that the two breaks are connected or just coincidence?

Obviously they are connected. America is backing out of the region.

If this stuff about American and Canadian shale oil estimates are true, expect more extremism in the Middle East as their economies collapse. Remember what happened to us Sikhs the last time the Islamic World lost it's economic clout?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...