PAF base attackers came from Afghanistan: DG ISPR

PESHAWAR: The Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Asim Salim Bajwa, said on Friday that the attack on the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Camp in Badaber was planned in Afghanistan.
He said such cowardly acts would not deter the spirit of the armed forces and vowed to go after the terrorists, their facilitators, financiers, abettors and sympathisers to take this war to its logical end.
“Well it’s too early to blame someone, a country or an institution for this cowardly and brutal act. But one thing is clear that this attack was planned in Afghanistan. All the terrorists involved in this attack were trained there and they came from there. The attack was controlled and handled from Afghanistan,” Maj Gen Asim Salim Bajwa told journalists at the the corps headquarters here.
He said he would not expect the Afghan government or the Afghan state to have played a role in such attacks.
He said that 29 people, including 23 PAF employees, three Pakistan Army troopers, including an officer, and three PAF civilian staffers were killed and 29 others were injured in the attack.
A Pakistani Taliban commander, Khalifa Omar Mansoor, who belongs to Adizai area located in Peshawar district on the boundary with the semi-tribal area of Darra Adamkhel and is based in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, claimed responsibility for the attack. He is loyal to the TTP head Maulana Fazlullah who too is based in Afghanistan.
Muhammad Khurasani, the TTP spokesman, claimed that they had dispatched a 14-member squad of suicide bombers, wearing explosives-laden jackets and armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 assault rifles, to attack the PAF base in Badaber.
Khalifa Omar Mansoor is the same TTP commander who claimed responsibility for the gruesome attack on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, in which 147 people, majority of them schoolchildren, were killed and more than 100 were injured.
Maj Gen Asim Bajwa said the intelligence agencies intercepted communication between the attackers and their handlers sitting in Afghanistan.
“Our technical experts are now working on these intercepts from different angles,” he said.
He didn’t make any comment when asked if the government or the military leadership had any plan to take up this issue with the Afghan government and its security establishment.
Responding to a query about the security failure of the intelligence agencies for not alerting the authorities concerned before the attack, Maj Gen Bajwa said since Pakistan was in a state of war such sporadic attacks could not be ruled out.
“The security agencies constantly issue security alerts, sometime on daily basis, and these alerts are taken seriously. But we have a long porous border with Afghanistan and then we have 2.5 million Afghan refugees still living here. Besides, 25,000-35,000 Afghans daily enter Pakistan only through the Torkham border in Khyber Agency. It becomes difficult to keep an eye on each and every person coming from across the border,” the military spokesperson argued.
Using harsh language for the militants, he said the terrorists were the enemies of Pakistan and the nation. “The Pakistani security forces are committed to fighting the menace of terrorism,” he stressed.
He said around 2,500 people were living inside the PAF Camp at Badaber being used as a residential area.
He said the militants entered the camp from two different directions and blew up the main entrance by using RPG-7 rockets and hand grenades.
The military spokesperson said the PAF guards fought well and prevented the attackers from entering the main base, where technical and administrative sections were located.
He said all the security installations in the camp remained safe in the attack. He said the Quick Response Force (QRF) arrived within no time to engage the attackers.
“After the QRF, light commandoes, SSG commandoes and the police force reached there soon and encountered the terrorists. They were contained within 10 meters and prevented from entering the technical and administration blocks,” he said.
According to the DG ISPR, 16 people were killed in the mosque and seven others in the nearby barracks.
Asked about possible informers of the attackers within the Badaber Camp who could have facilitated them, Maj Gen Asim Bajwa said: “There are some civilians working in the base and it is possible someone passed on information to them.”