The overnight attack on a police training academy in Pakistan's Quetta city has left 44 people besides three militants dead, with 118 injured, making it one of the deadliest strikes in the country this year.
The attack on the Balochistan Police College, 20 km from the province capital, began at around 11:10 PM last night, triggering an operation by Pakistani security forces who rescued hundreds of cadets from the academy.
"44 shaheed 118 inj #QuettaAttack (sic)," Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of Balochistan province tweeted.
Bugti had earlier told reporters that the attack had been carried out by three terrorists, cycling back on an earlier estimate by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) of "five to six terrorists".
While two of the militants had blown themselves up, one was killed in an exchange of fire with security forces, he said. He had put the casualties of policemen at 20.
"Security forces including the Frontier Corps and Pakistan Army light brigade have cleared 95 percent of the college area," he had said, adding that there were around 700 police cadets and recruits in the college hostel when the attack took place.
The three terrorists were believed to be from the Al-Alimi faction of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban, Frontier Corps IG, Major General Sher Afghan said.
He told reporters that the militants were communicating with handlers in Afghanistan and taking instructions from them.
Security forces had "cleared the college in four hours", he said.
A policeman who was guarding the only entry point of the college was among those gunned down.
Bugti said the injured people, mostly police cadets and security personnel, had been shifted to the Civil hospital, Bolan Medical College hospital and Military hospital in Quetta. "The condition of some is critical," he said.
He said there was a Frontier Corps official and captain among the injured.
Militants have conducted several attacks against security forces and national installations in Balochistan, which has been plagued by insurgency and growing sectarian killings for more than a decade.
The attack came a day after separatist gunmen for the Baloch Liberation Army on a motorcycle shot dead two coast guards and a civilian in coastal town of Jiwani near the Gwadar port in the same province.
In August, a suicide bombing at the Civil hospital in Quetta killed 73 people, most of them lawyers. A splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan as well as the IS claimed responsibility for carrying out the attack.
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