Suspected Al Qaeda Killed In Pakistan
Heavily armed police wearing body armor stormed a suspected al Qaeda hide-out Wednesday, killing two gunmen and arresting five others in a three-hour shootout in the southern city of Karachi. A young girl was shot dead in the crossfire.
A police source said the men were thought to be members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, although provincial police chief Syed Kamal Shah declined to comment. "I'm not saying that they were ordinary criminals, but I have to take stock of the situation," he told reporters shortly after the siege ended."
Police in Karachi had intensified land and aerial patrols on Wednesday to head off possible attacks on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Five officers - three policemen and two intelligence agents - were wounded, two of them critically, police said. The federal Interior Ministry in Islamabad said all the gunmen were foreigners but did not say from what country. An intelligence officer at the scene said one of the gunmen spoke Arabic.
A police official said the surviving gunmen could not speak Urdu, the Pakistani national language. He said police found a laptop and "literature" in the apartment and they suspected the gunmen were linked to al Qaeda.
The intelligence officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said police raided the apartment, located in a five-story building in an upscale neighborhood, after receiving a tip that "suspicious people were living there."
Police chief Kamal Shah said two of the gunmen were arrested inside the apartment. Others fled to the roof, where they battled police for three hours before they were killed or captured.
Witnesses said police had fired teargas and thousands of rounds at the building before the gunmen, armed with Kalashnikovs, grenades and submachine guns, finally surrendered. Their arsenal was heavier than is usually carried by ordinary Karachi criminals.
The intelligence official at the scene said one of the gunmen scrawled "There is no God but Allah" in Arabic in his own blood on the tiles of the kitchen wall.
While the shooting was still under way, police brought one woman and her young child, both in tears, to safety. "I don't know how many more are inside," she told a reporter as she was quickly led away.
As the gunmen held out on the roof, police commandos in body armor and helmets entered the building and slowly worked their way to the upper floors. Police, firing on the gunmen from the roofs of neighboring buildings, called on them to surrender. The gunmen responded with chants of "Allahu Akbar," or God is Great.
Within minutes, a burly, curly haired man was brought out with his entire face covered by a blindfold. Hundreds of policemen fired off volleys of gunfire to celebrate his capture. The final gunman was captured shortly afterward.
Shops in the area slammed down their shutters, and residents locked their doors and windows. Streets all around the neighborhood were deserted.
Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, is a hotbed of sectarian violence, crime and terrorism against foreign targets.
In January, Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was kidnapped here. His body was found in May. Four Islamic militants were convicted in July, and one of them, British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was sentenced the death. The others received life sentences.
A car bomb in May killed 11 French engineers and three other people, including the suicide attacker. Twelve Pakistanis were killed in June when a car bomb exploded outside the U.S. Consulate here.