Twenty-eight people were killed as Pakistan’s military fought an all-night battle Monday with Taliban gunmen who besieged Karachi airport armed with rocket launchers and suicide vests, leaving a nascent peace process in tatters.
Ten militants were among the dead, officials said, as Pakistan’s biggest city witnessed a return of the kind of spectacular offensive waged before by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.
The attack at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport began just before midnight Sunday and around dawn, the military said that all 10 attackers had been killed.
Some of the gunmen were dressed in army uniform, as authorities put their mangled bodies, assault rifles, grenades and rocket launchers on display for the press. At least three blew up their suicide vests, witnesses said, and one head on display was decapitated.
But after authorities initially declared the airport cleared around dawn, an AFP reporter witnessed fresh gunfire break out inside the airport – where explosions and fires had erupted during the night – prompting security forces to relaunch the operation.
“The attack is over and we have cleared the area of all militants,” a spokesman for the paramilitary Rangers, Sibtain Rizvi, told reporters later after nearly 12 hours of fighting in all.
The bodies of the 18 victims of the Taliban assault – including eight airport security guards and four workers from Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) – were taken to a Karachi hospital where another 26 wounded people were being treated, a hospital official said.
PIA spokesman Mashoor Tajwar said no airline passengers were caught up in the incident.
“None of the passengers were trapped in the building, we had diverted all the flights to Lahore and Nawabshah,” he told AFP. Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority said normal flight operations would resume at Karachi on Monday afternoon.
‘Thank God I am alive’
Officials said the gunmen entered from two sides of the airport at around 11pm on Sunday – the terminal used for the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and an engineering section close to an old terminal that is no longer in use.
An AFP reporter witnessed three huge blasts as suicide bombers detonated their explosives.
Smoke was seen billowing from the airport as fires raged close to planes parked on the runway, while militants clashed with the airport’s security force who were backed by police, paramilitary squads and elite commandos.
Broken glass and spent gun magazines littered the engineering section where the first exchange of gunfire took place as smoke from grenade attacks began to die down. “I heard fierce firing and then saw the terrorists firing at security force … Thank God I am alive, this is very scary,” said witness Sarmad Hussain, a PIA employee.
Soon after the attack began the airport was closed to flights, sending inbound planes to other cities and creating panic inside fully fuelled aircraft stuck on the ground.
