Third gun attack on brigadier in Pakistan capital
PAKISTAN - 6 NOVEMBER 2009
ISLAMABAD A Pakistani brigadier escaped assassination Friday in the third gun attack targeting top brass in the capital as the army claimed further gains in a major anti-Taliban offensive in the northwest.
Gunmen on a motorbike shot the military intelligence official and his driver at close range in the normally peaceful middle-class neighbourhood of I-8 on the outskirts of the leafy capital during morning rush hour.
"He just came out from his house... when two gunmen on a motorbike sprayed bullets at his vehicle. Luckily he survived. The gunmen fled," deputy superintendent of Islamabad police, Khurshid Khan, told AFP.
There was no claim of responsibility but Pakistan's security establishment has been in the crosshairs of increasingly brazen attacks underscoring the extremists' reach in the frontline state of the US-led war on Al-Qaeda.
Security officials said the brigadier worked in Pakistan's powerful military intelligence. Gunmen apparently followed his vehicle as he headed to work.
"This was the third attack on a military brigadiers in recent days and it seems high-ranking army officers are on terrorists' hit list," Khan said.
Doctor Nasir Ahmad told AFP at Islamabad's Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital that the brigadier and soldier were "stable".
Property dealer Amin Chughtai, one of the brigadier's neighbours, said he had been woken by the sound of gunfire.
"I thought my house was under attack," he said. "I found out later that gunmen targeted a vehicle and some people were wounded."
Friday's shooting was the third targeting commanders in Islamabad since the military last month put 30,000 troops into battle against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the South Waziristan tribal region.
On October 22, a brigadier on leave was shot dead. On October 27, a gunman opened fire on a car carrying another brigadier, although no one was wounded.
Tensions are high in the capital where checkpoints have mushroomed and high-security targets have increasingly disappeared behind giant concrete blast walls following a two-month spike in bloodshed.
The attacks, in which more than 300 people died last month alone, pushed Pakistan to launch its latest offensive on October 17, in the tribal belt on the Afghan border where Al-Qaeda is accused of plotting attacks on the West.
Commanders say they have captured a string of TTP strongholds in their most ambitious offensive yet against homegrown Taliban, which has displaced tens of thousands of civilians.
The army said Friday troops had stormed yet another Taliban stronghold, the town of Makin where militants were fleeing and "leaving behind their weapons and ammunition."
A large part of the town has been cleared while a clearance operation was under way in remaining pockets of resistance, said a statement.
A house of Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP chief who was killed in a US drone attack last August, had been also razed, the army said.
It added that 21 militants had been killed around Makin and three others in Sararogha, Mehsud's one-time operational centre.
Kilian Kleinschmidt, a senior UN refugee agency official, said 330,000 displaced people from South Waziristan had been registered, although only 165,000 people have so far been verified by a national database.
So far, the military says 446 militants and 42 troops have been killed in South Waziristan -- far fewer military losses than in previous offensives into the same forbidding mountains that ended with controversial peace deals.
The army provides the only regular information from the frontlines. Details cannot be verified as communication lines are down and journalists are barred from the area.
Pakistani paramilitary soldiers guard the site where gunmen attacked an army officer in Islamabad. A Pakistani brigadier has escaped assassination in the third gun attack targeting top brass in the capital as the army claimed further gains in a major anti-Taliban offensive in the northwest.
Source: AFP
PAKISTAN - 6 NOVEMBER 2009
ISLAMABAD A Pakistani brigadier escaped assassination Friday in the third gun attack targeting top brass in the capital as the army claimed further gains in a major anti-Taliban offensive in the northwest.
Gunmen on a motorbike shot the military intelligence official and his driver at close range in the normally peaceful middle-class neighbourhood of I-8 on the outskirts of the leafy capital during morning rush hour.
"He just came out from his house... when two gunmen on a motorbike sprayed bullets at his vehicle. Luckily he survived. The gunmen fled," deputy superintendent of Islamabad police, Khurshid Khan, told AFP.
There was no claim of responsibility but Pakistan's security establishment has been in the crosshairs of increasingly brazen attacks underscoring the extremists' reach in the frontline state of the US-led war on Al-Qaeda.
Security officials said the brigadier worked in Pakistan's powerful military intelligence. Gunmen apparently followed his vehicle as he headed to work.
"This was the third attack on a military brigadiers in recent days and it seems high-ranking army officers are on terrorists' hit list," Khan said.
Doctor Nasir Ahmad told AFP at Islamabad's Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital that the brigadier and soldier were "stable".
Property dealer Amin Chughtai, one of the brigadier's neighbours, said he had been woken by the sound of gunfire.
"I thought my house was under attack," he said. "I found out later that gunmen targeted a vehicle and some people were wounded."
Friday's shooting was the third targeting commanders in Islamabad since the military last month put 30,000 troops into battle against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the South Waziristan tribal region.
On October 22, a brigadier on leave was shot dead. On October 27, a gunman opened fire on a car carrying another brigadier, although no one was wounded.
Tensions are high in the capital where checkpoints have mushroomed and high-security targets have increasingly disappeared behind giant concrete blast walls following a two-month spike in bloodshed.
The attacks, in which more than 300 people died last month alone, pushed Pakistan to launch its latest offensive on October 17, in the tribal belt on the Afghan border where Al-Qaeda is accused of plotting attacks on the West.
Commanders say they have captured a string of TTP strongholds in their most ambitious offensive yet against homegrown Taliban, which has displaced tens of thousands of civilians.
The army said Friday troops had stormed yet another Taliban stronghold, the town of Makin where militants were fleeing and "leaving behind their weapons and ammunition."
A large part of the town has been cleared while a clearance operation was under way in remaining pockets of resistance, said a statement.
A house of Baitullah Mehsud, the TTP chief who was killed in a US drone attack last August, had been also razed, the army said.
It added that 21 militants had been killed around Makin and three others in Sararogha, Mehsud's one-time operational centre.
Kilian Kleinschmidt, a senior UN refugee agency official, said 330,000 displaced people from South Waziristan had been registered, although only 165,000 people have so far been verified by a national database.
So far, the military says 446 militants and 42 troops have been killed in South Waziristan -- far fewer military losses than in previous offensives into the same forbidding mountains that ended with controversial peace deals.
The army provides the only regular information from the frontlines. Details cannot be verified as communication lines are down and journalists are barred from the area.
Pakistani paramilitary soldiers guard the site where gunmen attacked an army officer in Islamabad. A Pakistani brigadier has escaped assassination in the third gun attack targeting top brass in the capital as the army claimed further gains in a major anti-Taliban offensive in the northwest.
Source: AFP
