KARACHI, Pakistan — Militants launched an hourslong assault on the police headquarters in Pakistan’s largest metropolis on Friday, officers mentioned, the most recent in a string of assaults on high-profile targets within the nation in latest months which have shaken many Pakistanis’ sense of safety and spurred issues about militant teams regaining power from secure havens in neighboring Afghanistan.
The assault in Karachi on Friday started round 7:10 p.m., when three militants stormed the five-story constructing in a closely guarded neighborhood house to many senior officers with Pakistan’s safety forces, based on Pakistani officers. For round 4 hours, the sounds of gunfire and explosions could possibly be heard within the coronary heart of the southern port metropolis because the police and safety forces battled the militants inside.
Seven folks — together with the three attackers — had been killed within the assault and 14 others had been wounded, based on Murtaza Wahab, the spokesman for Sindh Province.
“All three attackers had been killed in the course of the operation,” mentioned Muqadas Haider, a senior police officer. “One in all them blew himself up on the constructing’s fourth ground, whereas the opposite two had been shot useless on the roof.”
The Pakistani Taliban, generally known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or T.T.P., claimed duty for the assault.
The assault in Karachi comes three weeks after a mosque bombing in Peshawar killed at the very least 101 folks and wounded 217 others, principally law enforcement officials and authorities workers. That blast, for which a faction of the T.T.P. claimed duty, was the deadliest to hit Pakistan in years.
The high-profile assaults from the group have added to mounting proof that the Pakistani Taliban is regaining power in Afghanistan underneath that nation’s new Taliban administration, analysts say.
For a lot of in Karachi, the hourslong assault felt like a violent throwback to a decade in the past, when the Pakistani Taliban established a stronghold within the metropolis, bringing a guerrilla struggle as soon as confined to the nation’s tribal areas into the financial hub.
Shaped in 2007 amongst a free community of militants, the Pakistani Taliban rapidly emerged as one of many nation’s deadliest militant organizations.
For years, violence from the group was principally contained to the nation’s tribal belt alongside the Afghanistan border. However after a concerted Pakistani army operation in opposition to the group’s base within the tribal areas in 2009, some militants started migrating to the port metropolis of Karachi.
Inside just a few years, the group had constructed a robust presence in Karachi, reshaping the town’s established community of competing felony, ethnic and political armed teams. Throughout Karachi, Pakistani Taliban militants ran extortion rackets, killed political rivals and carried out bloody assaults on safety forces.
In one of many group’s largest assaults, in June 2014, 10 militants with the T.T.P. infiltrated Pakistan’s largest worldwide airport in Karachi, setting off an hourslong battle with safety forces, as passengers waited in a close-by terminal and in planes grounded on the tarmac. The assault prompted a Pakistani army offensive that flushed most T.T.P. fighters into Afghanistan.
After the Afghan Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistani authorities anticipated that the brand new authorities would assist rein within the T.T.P. in return for the covert assist Pakistan had given the Afghan Taliban in the course of the U.S.-led struggle in Afghanistan. However as an alternative, the T.T.P. seems to be regrouping from bases inside Afghanistan, analysts say, and asserting its return in Pakistan in a bloody present of suicide assaults.
On Friday night time, the prospect of that return turned actual as residents heard the trade of gunfire for hours.
“The violence and terrorism have returned to the town after just a few years of peace,” mentioned Bakht Ali, 31, a pupil whose uncle was killed in a T.T.P. assault over nonpayment of extortion in 2013. “By means of attacking police headquarters, the Taliban confirmed that they’re again with new power. God save us from them.”
Zia ur-Rehman reported from Karachi, and Christina Goldbaum from Kabul.
