News
Monday, May 30, 2011
Attacks on Pakistan Navy raise questions* After three incidents, several sagas are propagating across the country
By Atif Raza
KARACHI: Why the Pakistan Navy…, this is a query that is being whispered by every person after the PNS Mehran airbase attack that left 10 security personnel dead and 15 others injured.
The nation has so far vacillated to reveal the mystery that surfaced after twin bomb attacks on Pakistan Navy buses on April 26, 2011 in Karachi that left four naval personnel dead and over 40 others injured.
Before the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) initiated a probe into this connection, yet another powerful bomb rocked Karachi again with the same target on April 28, 2011 that claimed five lives.
After these incidents, several sagas were propagating across the country. Some people linked all these attacks to Bahrain uprising, while others blamed the international spy agencies for these attacks, but after PNS Mehran attack, the majority of people, who are feeling insecure and trying to use all other means to leave the country, want to know the facts in this regard. However, Interior Minister Rehman Malik had pledged to make public the facts behind the PNS Mehran attack.
Like the past, the police claimed to have initiated a formal investigation into the PNS Mehran airbase attack but there was no breakthrough yet in the investigation despite several arrests of suspects. Investigators said that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had claimed the responsibility of the attacks, but they were still examining all aspects to verify the veracity of this claim.
They said the terrorists fired seven Russian-made rockets in the attack, out of which five hit their targets. They used LMGs, SMGs and kalashnikovs in this attack, the investigators said. They said that the gun battle between the security forces and the terrorists took place in the range of 80 to 100 meters. They said that the ethnicity of the terrorists, which was not confirmed yet, could only be made through a DNA report.
The investigators said the fingerprints of the terrorists had not found in national database while the department was examining all other aspects from top to bottom to root out the causes of this incident. They said that the police were not provided CCTV footages of the place where the terrorists were believed to cut the barbed wires. They said the police had also recorded the statements of the inhabitants of Al Falah and Shahrah-e-Faisal areas to identify the place where this attack was planned.
They said that though it had been confirmed that the terrorists had used Russian-made weapons in the attack, yet it did not mean that they all were foreigners.
Obscurity is still surrounded to ascertain the number of attackers who had besieged the navy airbase in Karachi as the Navy officials, who earlier nominated 10-12 suspects in this attack, later approached the police department to reduce the number of suspects to six in the FIR, but the police had declined to do so due to legal limitation.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk