U.S. Consulate in Pakistan Attacked by Militants
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — In the most direct attack on an American facility in Pakistan in years, militants mounted a multipronged assault against the United States Consulate in this northern city on Monday, using a truck bomb, machine guns and rocket launchers, Pakistani and American officials said.
At least five attackers, all suicide bombers, failed to breach the outer perimeter of the compound, according to a Pakistani intelligence official, but they demolished part of an exterior wall with a large truck bomb that shook the city and sent huge plumes of brown dust and smoke into the sky. At least 6 Pakistanis were killed and 20 wounded. No Americans were killed or hurt.
The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, confirmed the attack. The coordinated assault involved “a vehicle suicide bomb and terrorists who were attempting to enter the building using grenades and weapons fire,” the embassy said.
Employees of the consulate were evacuated after the attack, according to a Pakistani official. Pakistani television reported that the consulate would be closed Tuesday, but an embassy spokeswoman could not immediately confirm that.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Azam Tariq, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani military operations in the western tribal areas that border Afghanistan, and for American missile strikes in the area that killed dozens of militants over the past several months.
The assault is a chilling reminder that the militants are still able to strike at prominent targets in Pakistan, even as operations by the Pakistani military in Taliban-controlled northern areas have brought a lull in violence over the past three months.
“They are trying to demonstrate that they are still alive and kicking,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst.
A Pakistani militant commander issued a veiled threat last week to attack important installations in Pakistan “to refresh the memories” of an attack on an American base in Khost, Afghanistan, in which seven Americans working for the Central Intelligence Agency were killed.
Militants have taken aim at Americans, and even the consulate in Peshawar in the past, but the commando-style siege that unfolded Monday was new. Similar tactics were employed last year in attacks on Pakistani targets: police training centers in and near Lahore, an eastern city, and the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
The strike was the second on Monday. A few hours earlier, a suicide bomber detonated his payload at a political ceremony in another northern area, killing 42 people. A police officer tried to overpower the bomber, and was shouting to a crowd of more than 500 when the bomb exploded.
The ceremony — in Dir, where several American soldiers were killed this year in a bomb attack at the opening of a girls’ school — was to celebrate a measure in Parliament to change the name of the North-West Frontier Province to Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, and was held by a Pashtun political party, the Awami National Party. More than 100 people were wounded.
In the assault in Peshawar, officials there said, a squad of well-armed militants attacked the outer security perimeter of the well-fortified consulate from the main intersection that connects Peshawar with the highway to Afghanistan and a military area.
According to television reports, witnesses said the attackers wore uniforms of the Pakistani security forces, though officials did not confirm that.
The militants drove to the outer security wall in pickup trucks, two intelligence officers and a senior government official said.
The first bomber walked toward the entrance while firing his automatic assault rifle, they said in separate interviews, and he later blew himself up near an armored personnel carrier close to the checkpoint.
Three other bombers followed closely, the officers and the government official said, and one of them fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the armored personnel carrier, causing an explosion, but missing his target.
“They used Russian-made Rocket-Propelled Grenade-7,” said a senior official from the bomb disposal squad. “Had it hit the A.P.C., it would have dug a hole in it.”
As the three bombers moved forward, the vehicle that had taken them to the consulate blew up, sending a plume of smoke into the sky, the officials said.
Security officials believe that this explosion killed several of the other bombers. Two bombers still wore live suicide jackets, and bomb squad officials later defused them. A bomb squad official said the jackets were typical of those made by the Taliban.
One intelligence official said it appeared that the bomber sitting in the vehicle had detonated the explosives prematurely, killing the other attackers in the process. That blast left a crater seven feet long and three and half feet wide, said the leader of the bomb disposal squad, Sahfqat Malik.
The dead included one police officer and two security guards from the Frontier Corps. Most of those killed or wounded were civilians.
There was no major damage to the consulate building, though the explosions smashed the windshields of several cars in the parking lot, the official said.
The consulate is in a busy area in the main part of the city. Peshawar, which was tormented almost daily by bomb strikes last fall, remains a vulnerable target.
“It is very easily accessible,” said Mr. Rizvi, the defense analyst. “From tribal area you can walk right into Peshawar.”
Militants attacked the United States Consulate in Karachi in 2002, killing more than 10 people, none of them Americans, and in 2008, militants fired at the top American diplomat in Peshawar as her armored car was leaving her residence for the consulate, but failed to harm her.
