Military naval base in Karachi in southern Pakistan, attacked Sunday night by a group of Taliban allied with al-Qaida to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden is now under control, said Monday a spokesman for the Navy Pakistan, seventeen hours after the assault began. At least thirteen soldiers were killed in the attack.
"The operation is ended and the base is now under control," he said. It was not immediately clear what happened to the attackers. "For now, I can not give you further details on the operation," added the spokesman. All the attackers were killed, said Monday the Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, who also states that foreign seventeen, eleven Chinese workers were released unharmed in the attack.
The all-powerful Pakistani army met with a new blow at the worst time in the heart of one of its sensitive installations in the largest city of the only nuclear military power in the Muslim world. The army is indeed blamed by Washington, who was surprised that the leader of al-Qaida has been able to live in peace for years in a garrison town, and a public deeply anti-American who is moved that U.S.
commandos have been entering the country with impunity to eliminate bin Laden. Ten to fifteen "terrorists", according to the military, fifteen to twenty by Taliban suicide bombers have taken advantage of the night, about 23 hours on Sunday to enter the Naval Air Station Mehran in Pakistan's commercial capital, populated by sixteen million inhabitants.
Once inside, they opened fire with light weapons and rocket launchers, destroying two surveillance aircraft coastal marine, P-3C Orion delivered by the United States, said Commander Salman Ali, spokesman for the Navy. Twelve soldiers of the navy were killed and a soldier in a unit of rangers, according to an official report.
Monday, more than thirteen hours after the start of the attack, the assailants were holed up in one of the buildings of the base, surrounded by soldiers. A journalist from the could hear gunfire and sporadic explosions. "We claim the attack to avenge Osama," he told the by telephone Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Movement of Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and conducting since summer 2007 a campaign of deadly attacks.
The TTP had sworn to avenge the death of bin Laden, killed May 2 by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos in Abbottabad, including by attacking security forces. Islamabad and the Taliban accuse the military of having been accomplices in the U.S. raid. "Our fighters are inside, they are all fedayeen, they can beat a week until martyrdom," the spokesman for the TTP.
He and allied Islamist groups are waging a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks that left nearly 4,400 dead in nearly four years. This is the third attack claimed by him in retaliation for the removal of the head of al-Qaida. The first, a double suicide bombing at a training center for police Shabqadar (North West), had 98 deaths on May 13 The TTP claimed responsibility on Friday, a suicide car bomb targeting of diplomats from the U.S.
consulate in Peshawar (North West), killing a bystander and wounding two Americans slightly. Sunday, several thousand people marched in Karachi to demand the cessation of firing almost daily drone of the CIA on the tribal areas of North West frontier with Afghanistan, a stronghold of the TTP, the main sanctuary in the world of Al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban rear base.
The Pakistani police and military were the main targets of bombings and attacks of TTP since summer 2007, when, in unison with bin Laden, he declared jihad in Islamabad and its security forces. 
"The operation is ended and the base is now under control," he said. It was not immediately clear what happened to the attackers. "For now, I can not give you further details on the operation," added the spokesman. All the attackers were killed, said Monday the Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, who also states that foreign seventeen, eleven Chinese workers were released unharmed in the attack.
The all-powerful Pakistani army met with a new blow at the worst time in the heart of one of its sensitive installations in the largest city of the only nuclear military power in the Muslim world. The army is indeed blamed by Washington, who was surprised that the leader of al-Qaida has been able to live in peace for years in a garrison town, and a public deeply anti-American who is moved that U.S.
commandos have been entering the country with impunity to eliminate bin Laden. Ten to fifteen "terrorists", according to the military, fifteen to twenty by Taliban suicide bombers have taken advantage of the night, about 23 hours on Sunday to enter the Naval Air Station Mehran in Pakistan's commercial capital, populated by sixteen million inhabitants.
Once inside, they opened fire with light weapons and rocket launchers, destroying two surveillance aircraft coastal marine, P-3C Orion delivered by the United States, said Commander Salman Ali, spokesman for the Navy. Twelve soldiers of the navy were killed and a soldier in a unit of rangers, according to an official report.
Monday, more than thirteen hours after the start of the attack, the assailants were holed up in one of the buildings of the base, surrounded by soldiers. A journalist from the could hear gunfire and sporadic explosions. "We claim the attack to avenge Osama," he told the by telephone Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for the Movement of Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and conducting since summer 2007 a campaign of deadly attacks.
The TTP had sworn to avenge the death of bin Laden, killed May 2 by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos in Abbottabad, including by attacking security forces. Islamabad and the Taliban accuse the military of having been accomplices in the U.S. raid. "Our fighters are inside, they are all fedayeen, they can beat a week until martyrdom," the spokesman for the TTP.
He and allied Islamist groups are waging a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks that left nearly 4,400 dead in nearly four years. This is the third attack claimed by him in retaliation for the removal of the head of al-Qaida. The first, a double suicide bombing at a training center for police Shabqadar (North West), had 98 deaths on May 13 The TTP claimed responsibility on Friday, a suicide car bomb targeting of diplomats from the U.S.
consulate in Peshawar (North West), killing a bystander and wounding two Americans slightly. Sunday, several thousand people marched in Karachi to demand the cessation of firing almost daily drone of the CIA on the tribal areas of North West frontier with Afghanistan, a stronghold of the TTP, the main sanctuary in the world of Al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban rear base.
The Pakistani police and military were the main targets of bombings and attacks of TTP since summer 2007, when, in unison with bin Laden, he declared jihad in Islamabad and its security forces.
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