PESHAWAR – An entire three-storey building was blown apart Tuesday asPakistani security forces detonated a huge amount of explosives hiddeninside, after a bloody, hours-long gun battle with militants holed up in acrowded city.
Video footage by an AFP reporter at the scene shows the building collapsingin the blast, with a cloud of dust and debris rising from the fallenstructure.
Officials said the militants — who have not yet been identified — hadused the building, in a residential area in the northwestern provincialcapital of Peshawar as a hideout.
Shafqat Malik, chief of Peshawar’s bomb disposal squad, told AFP themilitants had planted a motorcycle bomb at the gate of the building, andlinked it to more than 50 kilogrammes of explosives throughout thestructure.
Officers from the bomb disposal squad carried out a controlled detonationof the motorcycle device, Malik said, triggering the explosives inside andbringing the building crashing down.
The blast came after security forces had fought the militants for 17 hours,authorities said. In the moments before the explosion in the video footage,bullet holes can be seen across the building’s facade.
“During exchange of fire, five terrorists have been killed,” the Pakistanmilitary said in a statement, adding that one police officer was alsokilled.
Qazi Jamil, police chief for Peshawar city, told reporters that militantsopened fire on security forces with automatic guns, and also used mortarsand hand grenades.
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He said the fight began late Monday and continued overnight, and added thatinvestigators were working to identify the militants.
Neither the military nor Peshawar police named which of the myriad militantgroups operating in Pakistan that the fighters belonged to.
Islamabad has fought a long battle with Islamist militancy, with tens ofthousands of people believed killed. Peshawar, near the Afghan border, wasfor years at the centre of much of the violence.
But security across the country, including in Peshawar, has dramaticallyimproved since a government and military crackdown in recent years.
Analysts warn, however, that Pakistan has yet to tackle the root causes ofextremism. – APP/AFP
