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Special ops end five-hour stand-off that began with blast at emergency room where bus bomb survivors were taken
Pakistani police stormed a hospital that had been taken over by gunmen on Saturday, freeing hostages and ending a five-hour standoff that began with a bombing just outside the emergency room and left five dead, officials said.
The attack in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, came just after another blast ripped through a nearby bus carrying female university students, killing at least 11 people and wounding 19, police chief Mir Zubair Mahmood said.
Soldiers and police commandos had rushed to the scene of the attack, where five to seven gunmen had taken over different sections of the building, said the head of police operations, Fayaz Sumbal. Security forces later managed to pen the attackers into a certain area, Sumbal added, as helicopters hovered overhead to keep the assailants off the rooftops. Officials said at least four of the attackers died during the final assault by police.
An Associated Press reporter outside the hospital heard intermittent gunfire as troops took up positions around the building. As fighting continued into the evening, another loud explosion shook the hospital. Inside, patients, visitors and staff hid behind locked doors.
"Everybody is trying to take shelter in the corners, behind the steel cupboards and tables," Hidayatullah Khan, who had been visiting a niece wounded in the earlier bus bombing, told the AP by telephone. "Some armed people are roaming around but we closed the door and locked it. We have been hearing shots for some time."
Sumbal said the initial explosion at the hospital went off as rescuers and relatives of the victims from the bus bombing crowded the emergency room to which the dead and wounded had been taken. A top government official who had been visiting the wounded female students died in the hospital blast, officials said.
Four Frontier Corps troops also died, said interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, but it was not clear whether they were killed in the explosion or in the ensuing operation to clear the building. Khan said at least 35 people trapped inside the building had been freed. Besides the four attackers killed, one was in custody, the minister added.
Mahmood, the Quetta police chief, said two of the attackers blew themselves up as security forces were closing in. He said security forces were going methodically through the building, to make sure no attackers were left inside.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the hospital attack or bus bombing, although the Baluchistan region has been plagued by violence from Baluch nationalists, sectarian militant groups and the Taliban.
A spokesman for the Baluchistan government, Jan Mohammad Buledi, told Pakistan's Geo TV the two attacks were connected. Militants often stage coordinated attacks, in order to target rescuers and others.
Footage on Pakistani television showed people fleeing from the hospital after the explosion and hiding behind ambulances in the parking lot.
