Taliban kill 1 in attack on Pakistani air base

[August 16, 2012]  KAMRA, Pakistan (AP) -- A team of nine Taliban militants attacked a Pakistani air force base believed to be linked to the country's nuclear program before dawn Thursday, killing a security official in a heavy battle that ended with the insurgents dead and parts of the base in flames, officials said.

Hours later in northern Pakistan, gunmen forced 20 Shiite Muslims off buses, lined them up and killed them.

The separate incidents emphasize two daunting challenges the nuclear-armed country faces: a still-potent threat from the Pakistani Taliban despite numerous military offensives against their sanctuaries along the Afghan border and sectarian violence in a Sunni majority country where Shiite Muslims often feel under attack.

While the Pakistani Taliban have carried out hundreds of bombings and other attacks through the country, raids against military bases are somewhat uncommon.

The large air base, located only about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Islamabad, hosts a variety of fighter jets, including F-16s, and contains a factory that makes aircraft and other weapons systems. Some experts suspect the base could be linked to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal because of the weapons development there and the presence of jets that could be used to deploy the bombs. The army has denied the base has any links, but the nuclear program's secret nature makes independent evaluation difficult.

The safety of the country's nuclear weapons has been a major concern for the United States. Western experts say Pakistan has about 100 nuclear weapons and is in the midst of a rapid expansion of its arsenal.

"The great danger we've always feared is that, you know, if terrorism is not controlled in their country, that those nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

The militants, some of whom were wearing explosives strapped to their bodies, attacked the base at around 2 a.m. with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, according to the air force.

At least one of the rockets hit a hangar, pierced the hangar wall and exploded, damaging one of the aircraft parked inside, said air force spokesman, Tariq Mahmood.

After the rocket barrage, the attackers scaled the wall surrounding the air base and an intense firefight ensued, said Mahmood.

Security forces, backed by a team of elite commandos, fought the militants for two hours and were finally able to retake the base, the air force said. By the end of the battle, one soldier was dead and the nine militants were killed, one of them when he blew himself up outside the base perimeter, the air force said.

The head of the base, Air Commodore Muhammad Azam, was wounded in the shoulder, said Mahmood.

Security forces searching the area after the attack found a "few IEDs," which they either removed or destroyed, the spokesman said.

The base is formally known as Air Force Base Minhas. It was named after a pilot, Rashid Minhas, lauded as a hero in Pakistan for foiling attempts by his instructor to defect with an air force plane to archrival India in 1971. To stop the escape, Minhas disabled the controls of the plane the two were flying, and died in the resulting crash.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the air base attack, saying it was revenge for the death of the group's leader Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone strike in 2009 and the American commando raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden last year. He claimed the militants damaged three fighter jets.

The Pakistani Taliban have waged a bloody insurgency against the government for the past several years that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Half a dozen Taliban militants attacked a major naval base in the southern port city of Karachi in May 2011, killing at least 10 people and destroying two U.S.-supplied surveillance aircraft. It took Pakistani commandos 18 hours to retake Naval Station Mehran, and two of the attackers escaped. That the attackers managed to infiltrate so deep into the high-security base led to speculation they may have had inside information or assistance.

In 2009, militants dressed in fatigues attacked army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi, just outside Islamabad, and took 30 people hostage. Pakistani commandos finally raided the compound 22 hours later. Three captives and four militants were among those killed.

There have been at least three attacks in the vicinity of the Minhas base since 2007, but all of them occurred outside the installation.

The Pakistani army has carried out numerous offensives against the Pakistani Taliban in the country's semiautonomous tribal area along the Afghan border and appears to be planning an operation in the group's last major sanctuary in North Waziristan.

Panetta told The Associated Press earlier this week that Pakistan has informed American military officials that it plans to launch an operation against the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan in the "near future."

In the sectarian attack, gunmen forced 20 Shiites off three buses in the Naran Valley in northern Pakistan, shot and killed them, said a police official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was worried about retribution.

The Deputy Inspector General of police in Gilgit, Ali Sher, said the victims were traveling from Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, to Gilgit, a mostly Shiite area.

There have been several such sectarian attacks in the region in the past by Sunni extremists who do not view Shiites as true Muslims.

In February gunmen stopped a convoy of buses in the city of Manshera, ordered selected Shiite Muslim passengers to get off and then killed 16 of them.

In April, violence between Sunnis and Shiites killed 14 people in and around the town of Gilgit in northern Pakistan.

[Associated Press; SEBASTIAN ABBOT and B.K. BANGASH]

Abbot reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad, Munir Ahmed and Rebecca Santana in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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