Pakistan, Oct 25 (NIA) – At least 60 cadets and guards have been killed after militants attacked a police college in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Monday night, officials said.
Three militants have also been killed, and 118 others injured, making it one of the deadliest strikes in the country this year.
The attack on the Police Training College on Saryab Road in the Balochistan province capital began at around 11:10 PM, triggering an operation by Pakistani security forces who rescued hundreds of cadets from the academy, the Economic Times reported.
The militants wearing suicide bomb vests entered the college late on Monday, reportedly taking hostages.
BBC reported that a major security operation lasted for hours and all attackers were killed.
The three terrorists were believed to be from the Al-Alimi faction of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban.
“I saw three men in camouflage whose faces were hidden carrying Kalashnikovs,” one cadet said according to AFP news agency. “They started firing and entered the dormitory but I managed to escape over a wall.”
The police academy is home to about 600 students and many of the cadets who died were killed in the blasts, said Major General Sher Afgan of the Frontier Corps.
Pakistan’s army and the paramilitary Frontier Corps took part in the military counter-operation, which Balochistan provincial home minister Mir Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti said was now over.
