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TERROR ATTACK ON POLICE ACADEMY

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Lahore siege ends; gunmen, 20 hostages killed

TimePublished on Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 16:14, Updated on Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 21:04 in World section

GOING IN: Police officers take cover outside the police training school near Lahore.

GOING IN: Police officers take cover outside the police training school near Lahore.


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Lahore: Pakistani security forces took control of a police academy in Lahore on Monday after gunmen rampaged through the centre's parade ground, killing up to 20 people before holing up inside for hours.

"The operation is over. Four terrorists were killed and three arrested," Interior Ministry Secretary Kamal Shah told Reuters. He said 89 policemen were wounded but the number killed was still being determined.

Television news channels showed jubilant police shouting praise to God and firing in the air, soon after an intense burst of firing inside the academy.

Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab province, said authorities had reports of four people confirmed killed, although television news channels put the number of dead at 20, including cadets.

"It was like doomsday; it was every man to himself. Every boy was trying to race to safety," one young cadet with bandaged hands told reporters at a hospital.

The latest brazen attack will heighten fears about mounting insecurity in nuclear-armed Pakistan. The assault came less than a month after gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team in Lahore, killing six police guards and a bus driver.

Those gunmen escaped. One wounded policeman described how the attackers struck while police recruits were going through their regular morning drill on the parade ground in the eastern city.

"A grenade hit the platoon next to ours ... then there was continuous firing for about 20 minutes," the policeman told reporters gathered round his hospital bed. "A man in light-coloured clothes--I think they were white--stood in front of us, firing at us. They wanted to do as much damage as possible."

Islamist militants have launched a campaign of violence to destabilise the Muslim nation of 170 million people, and the one-year-old civilian government's ability to meet the challenge.

US President Barack Obama made support for President Asif Ali Zardari's government a centrepiece of a review of policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan that was announced on Friday, and which made annihilation of al Qaeda the United States' principle objective.

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