Dawn has one harrowing account, with the actua tally of wounded and killed still unconfirmed and uncertain, with ranges from 13 dead, 52 policemen wounded, and as many as 400 held hostage. The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent media round up of the deadly Police school gunbattle in Pakistan, as the unraveling continues:
Elite police forces recaptured a police training school after four gunmen took it over in an eight-hour siege near Lahore on Monday, leaving a total of 12 dead and as many as 90 injured.
A police commando involved in the operation said three of the gunmen blew themselves up as commandos closed in. “We announced: Give yourself up,” said Arif Ali, 32, a member of an elite squad of 15 men. “But they chose to kill themselves.” Another gunman was killed, and several others arrested.
Announcing the end of the operation, the senior official at the Pakistani Ministry of Interior, Rehman Malik, said the attack was intended to destabilize Pakistan and illustrated how far “our enemies” had penetrated the country.
The backdrop of all this, of course, is Obama’s new Af-Pak strategy, which Clinton and her team are outlining in the Hague beginning tomorrow.
Pakistan is blaming the gunbattle on the Taliban. Oh, the irony. The Frankenstein you create may kill you. That’s the legacy of the Bush “Musharaff strategy,” as Biden calls it, but also of what Reagan began back in the 1980s, which was supported over decades. Obama gets to deal with it all.
I don’t think Afghanstan should be in the headlines. We just signalled “not going there.”
We’ll try to back out troops. We owe them that.
The UN deserves to have the US back them out.
We simply don’t have the guts or the money for this one.
Nice to hear the RNC talking points from the local concern troll.
Also nice to see Pakistan starting to take on the Taliban/Bush Crime Family legacy. Seems to me that there may be a fair number of Pakistani Police and Military who just might have it up to there with these foriegners killing and disrupting Pakitani society.
When it comes to the Taliban in general I’m afeared I have arrived at a kill them all state of mind.
You can not reason with a mad dog.