The government said the siege had steeled its resolve to go through with the offensive. The United States and Islamabad’s other Western allies want the country to take more action against insurgents also blamed for soaring attacks on US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Explosions and gunshots rang out as commandos moved into a building in the complex just before dawn today, while a helicopter hovered in the sky. Three ambulances were seen driving out of the heavily fortified base close to the capital, Islamabad.
Two hours after the raid began, two new explosions were heard. The army said it was “mopping up’’ the remaining insurgents.
Up to five heavily armed militants took the hostages after they and about four other assailants attacked the main gate of the army headquarters yesterday, killing six soldiers, included a brigadier and a lieutenant colonel. Four of the attackers, who were wearing army uniforms, were killed.
No group claimed responsibility, but authorities said they were sure that the Pakistani Taliban or an allied Islamist militant group were behind the strike. The city is filled with security checkpoints and police roadblocks.
Major General Athar Abbas, an army spokesman, said 20 of the hostages had been kept in a room guarded by a militant wearing a suicide vest who was shot and killed before he managed to detonate his explosives.
He said the 22 who were freed included soldiers and civilians. Three captives were killed, along with four militants, he said. “It was a very skilled rescue operation,’’ he said.
Yesterday’s siege followed a car bombing that killed 49 Friday in the northwestern city of Peshawar and the bombing of a UN aid agency earlier in the week that killed five in Islamabad. The string of attacks destroyed any remaining hope that the militants had been left a spent force by the death of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in a US missile strike in August.
The army - which until 2001 had patronized various militant groups for use as proxies in Afghanistan and India - had previously been unwilling to go into Waziristan. Three earlier offensives there have ended in failure, and no one thinks the fight against an estimated 10,000 well-armed fighters there will be any easier this time.
But there are hopes the army may have learned from its successful operation in the northwestern Swat Valley this year.
“I want to give a message to the Taliban that what we did with you in Swat, we will do to you there [in Waziristan], too,’’ said Interior Minister Rehman Malik. “We are going to come heavy on you.’’
