LAHORE, Pakistan — Islamist militants launched coordinated assaults on three police
compounds in Pakistan's second largest city, Lahore, on Oct. 15. The latest in a wave of attacks by insurgents brought the war to the country's heartland, ahead of an expected offensive against their border sanctuary.
At least 19 people were killed in the Lahore attacks, most of them security officers, along with nine heavily armed attackers.
Gunmen in all three attacks carried dried fruit and apparently were preparing to dig in for a long siege, said Rana Sanaullah, the provincial law minister.
"We are here to lay down our lives for Islam. Jihad will continue," two attackers shouted before blowing themselves up, according to one police officer. Most of the militants detonated suicide belts after they were injured or cornered to avoid capture, witnesses said.
One of the targets in Lahore was a training centre for an elite anti-terrorist police unit. The assaults began at about 9 a.m., when a gunman wearing civilian clothes and a suicide vest burst into the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency, the national law enforcement body, and began shooting, Sanaullah said. The attacker killed two men and four civilians, but was slain by guards before he could detonate his explosives.
Soon after, four gunmen raided a police training school on the outskirts of the city, killing 11 officers and recruits before police killed all the attackers.
A third team then scaled the back wall of a police commando training centre near the airport. The attackers stood on the roof of a house, shooting at security forces and throwing grenades, said Lt. Gen. Shafqat Ahmad, the top military officer in Lahore.
The four assailants were killed, along with a police officer and a civilian, Sanaullah said.
The dramatic escalation in violence appears to be an attempt by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to seize the initiative from the army and deliver a warning to the civilian government
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