Gunmen disguised as guards stormed a terminal at Pakistan's busiest airport on Sunday with machine guns and a rocket launcher during a five-hour siege that killed 18 people, officials said. (Associated Press)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Heavily armed gunmen who attacked Karachi’s international airport planned to destroy airplanes and possibly take hostages, Pakistani government and security officials said Monday.
The attackers, some disguised as security forces, stormed parts of Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport late Sunday, killing at least 18 people before government troops regained control early Monday. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility Monday for the assault, which appeared to dash hopes for peace talks.
The attack began around 11 p.m. Sunday and lasted until dawn. It was well-coordinated and involved 10 attackers who were carrying grenades, suicide vests, rocket launchers, automatic rifles and enough food for a prolonged assault, the officials said.
Mohyuddin Ahmad Wani, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said the attackers “planned to destroy all the airplanes” that were parked at the airport.
“The terrorists had a plan to bring down our aviation industry,” Wani said. “The valiant effort of [security forces] defeated the terrorists, and the national assets were saved.”
The attack occurred at the same time as several international flights were scheduled to land at Jinnah International, the main airport in Pakistan’s largest city. Pervez Rasheed, Pakistan’s information minister, told reporters in Karachi that officials believe the terrorists had “a plan to take over the airport” and seize control of planes.
About 90 minutes after the siege began, however, hundreds of Pakistani army commandos arrived on the scene. They quickly engaged the terrorists, eventually killing eight of them. Two others detonated explosives when cornered, officials said. Around 5 a.m. Monday, an army spokesman declared that the airport had been secured.
No passengers were killed or wounded in the attack. But the militants killed at least 18 other people, including more than a dozen security officials, authorities said. Four Pakistan International Airlines employees were also reported killed. The bodies of the 10 attackers remained in police custody.
In a statement Monday, Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said the attack was in response to recent Pakistani military airstrikes in northwestern Pakistan and to a U.S. drone strike in November that killed Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the radical Islamist group.
Shahid added the attack should be viewed as a sign that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to engage the group in peace talks had failed.
“The message to the Pakistani government is that we are still alive to react to the killings of innocent people in bomb attacks on their villages,” said Shahid, adding the attack followed months of intensive planning.
In his statement, Shahid indicated that the attackers had intended to seize aircraft at the airport’s old terminal, which is used for VIP flights and cargo. “The main goal of this attack was to damage the government, including by hijacking planes and destroying state installations,” Shahid said, according to Reuters news agency.
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The attack began when the gunmen, described as being in their late teens or early 20s, entered the airport grounds through two separate gates at the airport’s old terminal. Many were wearing the same uniforms worn by the Karachi Airport Security Force and were carrying fake entry passes, officials said.
Once inside, the attackers clashed with security forces before some of them seized control of different parts of the airport grounds. At one point, some of the militants approached an aircraft that was carrying passengers, but security officials prevented them from reaching it, Rasheed and Pakistani security officials said.
But at least two planes were hit by gunfire. The militants also set several large fires, which continued to burn Monday morning, with clouds of smoke billowing over the airport.
According to preliminary identifications, security officials said all of the slain militants appeared to be foreign nationals, perhaps from Uzbekistan. The men were carrying bottles of water, dates and fruit, in addition to dozens of weapons.
“They had a plan to spend the whole night at the airport to do the maximum amount of damage,” said one Pakistani military official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
When the attack began, all arriving flights were quickly diverted from the airport. And the gunmen did not make it into the passenger terminal.
One passenger, Ignas Vosylius, said in an interview with the BBC that he was at the baggage claim area when he heard multiple explosions outside the terminal.
“People were confused and didn’t know what was happening,” Vosylius told the BBC. “In quite a short time, security sealed all the entrances and said there are people with guns and explosives barricading themselves in other parts” of the airport.
After three hours, Vosylius said Pakistani soldiers escorted him and others in the terminal to safety.
The Karachi airport, which serves about 6 million passengers annually, was reopened to air traffic about 2:30 p.m. Monday.
But the siege, one of the worst security breaches at a Pakistani airport, is raising serious questions about the country’s ability to protect its major transit hubs amid the persistent threat of terrorism. The attack comes as Sharif and the country’s military have been considering a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, which has been waging a bloody insurgency.
“This act of terror is unforgivable,” Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan’s defense minister, told local television reporters. “The state will give an appropriate response to such cowardly acts of terror. Those who plan and those who execute the terrorist attacks will be defeated.”
The attack is likely to be another blow to Pakistan’s efforts to lure international business to help its struggling economy.
“I would not want to send any nonmilitary, non-law-enforcement personnel into that area at this moment,” Terrance W. Gainer, a security consultant and former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, said in an interview. He said U.S. security and anti-terrorism officials would undoubtedly be scrutinizing the attack to learn how it occurred.
Karachi is home to thousands of suspected Pakistani Taliban militants, whose presence has made it one of Pakistan’s most violent and volatile cities.
In recent days, security officials had warned of the likelihood of a major terrorist attack in Karachi in response to Pakistani military operations against insurgents in North Waziristan near the Afghan border.
Over the past two weeks, more than a dozen Pakistani soldiers have been killed in attacks near the border. In response, the army has launched airstrikes in the region and has stepped up its shelling of suspected militant strongholds inside Afghan territory.
But the army has stopped short of a major ground assault on Taliban strongholds, which some Pakistani officials fear could lead to even more lethal attacks in Pakistani cities.
“We need to keep extremely vigilant at all the airports,” Shujjat Azeem, the prime minister’s aviation adviser, said in a statement.
In a separate attack Sunday night, more than two dozen Shiite pilgrims were killed in the western province of Baluchistan when two suicide bombers struck near the bus they were traveling in, officials said. The attack occurred near Pakistan’s border with Iran.
On Monday afternoon, at least four Pakistani soldiers were killed when a bomb detonated near a military checkpoint in North Waziristan, local officials said.
Aamir Iqbal in Peshawar, Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Nisar Mehdi in Nawabshah and Christian Hettinger in Washington contributed to this report.
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