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Terrorist attacks on police in Pakistan kill 5, injure 14

19 June 2010 21:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. At least five policemen were killed and 14 others injured in four separate attacks against the police forces which were launched by terrorists from late Friday night till Saturday afternoon in different parts of Pakistan, APA reports quoting Xinhua News Agency.

The first attack took place in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh late Friday night when four unknown gunmen fired at a police van patrolling on the street in Sanghar, a city in the central part of Sindh province, killing two policemen and injuring three others. One of the injured cops is said to be in critical condition.

The second attack report came in from Pakistan’s northwest province of Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa (formerly called North West Frontier Province) at about 8 am (local time) Saturday morning. During the attack, a remote-controlled bomb blast near a police van injuring five cops and four civilians. About 14 suspects were arrested by the police during the search operation following the blast, which went off in the province’s southern district of Dera Ismail Khan.

Shortly after this, another report came in from the country’s southwest province of Balochistan, saying one police officer was killed and three of his colleagues were injured by unidentified gunmen while on a routine patrol Saturday morning in the province’ s capital city of Quetta.

The fourth attack occurred at about 3 pm (local time) Saturday afternoon when an unknown number of terrorists attacked a city court in Karachi, the largest city located on the southern tip of Pakistan, by throwing hand grenades and opening fire at the police near the court, killing at least one policeman and injuring three others.
The terrorists were said to be linked with Jundullah Group, a terrorist organization based in Balochistan, as four members of Jundullah Group were presented to the court when the attack happened. Reports say that the terrorists succeeded in taking away one prisoner from police custody. During the crossfire with the police, one of the attackers was also killed.
The latest attack in Karachi has made the whole nation of Pakistan even more worried about the security situation in the city. Over the last few days alone, terrorist attacks in the city have claimed more than a dozen lives. The Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik ordered the Rangers to control the situation immediately after the attack broke out in Karachi.
So far, no organizations have claimed responsibility for the four attacks on the police in the country.
It is a rare phenomenon at least for the past month that so many attacks were targeted at the police in different parts of the country within a single day’s time.
It is not known yet whether these attacks were separate incidents or were coordinated by some organizations behind them to achieve a specific target. But all the four attacks coincided with the time when the United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrook is here in Islamabad for a two-day visit to Pakistan.