Pak intelligence agencies uncover plot to assassinate Zardari

Pakistani intelligence agencies have uncovered a plot to assassinate President Asif Ali Zardari and arrested several persons, TV news channel reported. 

The agencies conducted raids over the past few weeks in Islamabad and Punjab and arrested up to 42 persons, the reports said. 

GEO News channel quoted its sources as saying that 42 people had been arrested while Express News Channel reported that eight have been arrested. 

The reports said the plotters had planned to target Zardari while he visited the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, where his father Hakim Ali Zardari was being treated till his recent death. 

There were also reports that the plotters had planned to target Zardari at Nawab Shah in Sindh province. 

There was no official word on the alleged assassination plot. 

Security officials have said in the past that the President faces serious threat to his life from the Taliban and other militant groups. 

Zardari rarely makes public appearances due to security concerns.


 
 

Terrorists attack Pakistan military base, at least 12 military personnel killed

About 12 hours after storming Pakistan navy's key airbase in the heart of the port city of Karachi, heavily-armed Taliban militants were still holding onto parts of the base after destroying two US-made surveillance aircraft and killing 12 military personnel.

Pakistan army's elite Special Service Group (SSG) and naval commandos backed by helicopters were hunting down a group of 15-20 militants who attacked the naval premises last night in the worst assault on a military base since the Army Headquarters was besieged in October 2009 in Rawalpindi.

Security forces were engaged in a deadly gunbattle with armed militants since last night after the militants sneaked into the PNS Mehran, the naval air station within Faisal airbase, from three residential points adjacent to the air base.

Fifteen loud explosions were heard from the base, the headquarters of Pakistan's naval air arm, following the attack and intermittent firing was reported till this morning.

The security forces also killed four militants and have captured four alive, a senior security official said.

Interior minister Rehman Malik, who was dispatched to Karachi by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to monitor the situation, said the terrorists entered the airbase from three directions.

"A building in the premises is still under their control from where they are exchanging fire with soldiers," he said as the militants blew up two US supplied PC-3 Orion long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft.

"The situation is being tackled delicately to secure assets, minimise human losses and defeat the terrorists completely," he said, adding, "It is not just an attack on a navy establishment, it is an attack on Pakistan."

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which has stepped up attacks on security installations since the May 2 death of Osama bin Laden, has claimed responsibility for the assault.

"We had already warned after Osama's martyrdom that we will carry out even bigger attacks," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told foreign agencies from an undisclosed location in northwest Pakistan.

He said the attackers sent into PNS Mehran naval base had enough supplies to survive a three-day siege.

"They have destroyed two P-3c Orion aircraft," another Navy spokesman Commander Salman Ali said. The long-range reconnaissance aircraft were bought from the US by Pakistan.

Hundreds of security personnel, including from the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers and elite naval and army commandos, moved into the airbase to flush out the terrorists.

Authorities used helicopters throughout the night to mount surveillance over the airbase.

Heavy exchanges of fire between the attackers and terrorists continued till about 11.30 pm last night, and was then followed by intermittent firing and 15 blasts after midnight.

"The operation still continues. It is not over yet," said one security official. The cordon around the attackers was being tightened and the operation was likely to be completed soon, he said.

The terrorists targeted several hangars where the navy's P3C Orion surveillance aircraft were parked.
Footage on television overnight showed ambulances rushing to the airbase.

Flames and thick smoke billowed into the sky from an object burning near a four-engine aircraft that looked like a P3C Orion.

The high-security area where the attack occurred also houses the PAF's Southern Air Command, Air War College and museum.

Security was tightened across Pakistan following the attack, particularly at military installations and in the federal and provincial capitals.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani strongly condemned the terrorist attack. Gilani said such "cowardly acts of terror could not deter the commitment of the government and people of Pakistan to fight terrorism".

Defence and political analysts termed the attack by the militants as a big security lapse by the Naval forces that needed to be investigated thoroughly.

Head of Pakistan Navy Vice Admiral Noman Bashir said the country's armed forces would continue their fight against terrorists.

Security sources said that the terrorists apparently entered the Naval Mehran air station adjacent to the Pakistan Airforce Faisal base on the main Shahrah-e-Faisal road through three different routes dressed in military uniforms.

"They took advantage of the fact that people at that time were leaving for home from the PAF museum inside the Faisal base," one source said.

Sources said that some Chinese engineers were also working at the naval base where the attack took place but they were evacuated safely.

"The air station was basically used as an operational and surveillance centre with a runaway and hangers by the naval aircrafts and also had a training centre," provincial government official Ahmed Chinoy said. 

Mullah Omar killed

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has been killed in Pakistan, Xinhua cited a private television channel as stating on Monday. 

"Mullah Omar was killed on way from Quetta to North Waziristan," Afghanistan's TOLO television stated.

However, it did not provide details on how he was killed and by whom.

Meanwhile, a security official confirmed the killing, saying: "It is correct that Mullah Omar has been killed."

But he did not disclose details.

Omar was considered the spiritual leader of the Taliban movement that operates in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was Afghanistan's de facto head of state from 1996 to late 2001 and had the title "Head of the Supreme Council".

Explosion in Afghan military hospital

The Afghan Defence Ministry said that a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a tent filled with medical students eating lunch at a military hospital in Kabul on Saturday, killing at least six people and wounding 23.

Defence Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zaher Azimi said that Saturday's blast occurred on the grounds of the Mohammad Daud Khan military hospital in central Kabul.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid took responsibility for the attack.

Militants attack Pakistan navy base, four killed

Flames and smokes belches out from a Pakistani base after an attack by militants in Karachi on May 22, 2011.

Militants attacked a Pakistani naval aviation base on Sunday, killing at least four people, officials said, the latest attack on a heavily guarded military installation in Pakistan. 

Senior police official Tahir Naveed said attackers were inside the Mehran base in Karachi fighting with base personnel.

Witnesses said they could hear sounds of gunshots and see smoke rising from the base. Officials said between 15 and 20 attackers were inside the base, and had attacked three hangars housing aircraft. Eight explosions were reported from the base.

"Three hangers were hit. There is some damage to aircraft or helicopters," an intelligence official said.

A least a dozen ambulances were parked outside the base, waiting to take wounded to hospital. Pakistani military and paramilitary reinforcements were pouring in, with four vehicles carrying about 10 troops each moving into the base.

Taliban militants, who have vowed to avenge the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by US special forces, have carried out several attacks since his death on May 2.

An intelligence official said four people had been killed and five wounded in the Karachi raid.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani condemned the "terrorist" attack at the naval base.

"Such a cowardly act of terror could not deter the commitment of the government and people of Pakistan to fight terrorism," Gilani said in statement.

Pakistan television reported that a P-3 Orion maritime surveillance plane was attacked in the assault.

The Karachi attack evoked memories of an assault on Pakistan's army headquarters in the town of Rawalpindi in 2009, and revived concerns that even the most well-guarded institutions in the country remain vulnerable to militants.

Pakistan has faced a wave of bombings and gun assaults over the last few years, some of them claimed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban.

Others have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked militant groups once nurtured by the Pakistani military which have since slipped out of control.

ABBOTTABAD

A US special forces raid on May 2 which found and killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad has also revived suspicions that militants may be receiving help from some people within the security establishment.

Pakistan and the United States say the senior leadership in the country did not know bin Laden was in Abbottabad.

On April 28, suspected militants detonated a roadside bomb in Karachi, killing four members of the navy, the third attack on the navy in a week.

The attack came two days after two bombs hit buses carrying navy personnel, killing four people and wounding 56. Taliban insurgents took responsibility for the twin attacks.