ISLAMABAD: Gunmen killed eight people in an attack Monday on a army camp in a city where thousands of Islamists spent the night on their way to the capital to protest the government's recent decision to reopen the Nato supply line to Afghanistan, police said.
Police were searching for the culprits and it was unclear if any of the protesters were involved, said Basharat Mahmood, police chief in the eastern city of Gujrat where the attack occurred.
"It is surely a terrorist attack," said Mahmood. "The attackers could have taken cover. They could have hid themselves among the protesters."
The camp on the outskirts of Gujrat was attacked at around 5:20 am, a little less than an hour after the leaders of the Difah-e-Pakistan, finished delivering speeches inside the city, said the police.
The group, which includes Islamist politicians and religious leaders, left the city of Lahore on Sunday along with 8,000 supporters in 200 vehicles to make the 300-kilometer (185-mile) journey to Islamabad. They travelled about halfway, spent the night in Gujrat and plan to hold a protest in front of parliament in the capital on Monday.
The roughly half dozen gunmen who attacked the camp were riding in a car and on motorcycles. They killed seven soldiers at the camp and a policeman who tried to intercept them as they were escaping, said Mahmood, the police chief. Four policemen and at least three soldiers were wounded, he said. The camp that was attacked was set up to look for the body of an army major who was flying a helicopter when it crashed into a river in the area, said the police.
Comments
Comments are closed.