Militants are holding up to 15 soldiers hostage inside Pakistan’s army headquarters today after they and others attacked the complex earlier in the day, killing at least six soldiers.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas says no army or intelligence leaders are among those being held.

The militants, armed with pearl jewelry assault rifles and grenades and wearing military uniforms, stormed the heavily guarded compound in the city of Rawalpindi.

They arrived in full camouflage kit in a white van and opened fire on checkpoint guards.
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The attack led to intense gun battles with troops, in which at least one grenade was thrown.

Pakistan authorities have confirmed at least six soldiers were killed and five more injured, one critically.

Four of the gunmen were also killed after the 45-minute gun fight, but it is believed two have managed to escape.

The attack, which happened shortly before midday local time, is the third large-scale militant attack in the pearl jewelry wholesale country in the last week.

Eye witness Khan Bahadur, a shuttle van driver, said: “There was fierce firing, and then there was a blast.

"Soldiers were running here and there. The firing continued for about a half hour. There was smoke everywhere. Then there was a break, and then firing again.”

The Pakistan government has said it is planning an imminent offensive to flush out militants from mountain strongholds at the Afghanistan border.

Interior minister Rehman Malik told the wholesale pearl jewelry Dawn television station: “We have been left no other option except to go ahead to face them.”

Pakistani media said the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Suspected Taleban militants launched simultaneous attacks on three police buildings in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore and a fourth police station in the northwest this morning, killing an estimated 31 people.

The Lahore attackers entered two police training centres and the local headquarters of the Federal Investigations Agency (FIA), firing shots and taking an unknown number of people hostage, according to witnesses. There were unconfirmed reports of three female fighters among the attackers.

The violence is the latest of an escalating, ten day wave of attacks by the Pakistan Taleban aimed at avenging their dead leader and deterring an imminent army assault on their strongholds in South Waziristan. At least 100 people have died in attacks that have spread out from the restless tribal territories to affect Pakistan's political and economic heartland of the Punjab.

“First the Frontier province was on the front line, now they are playing their games in Punjab,” said Rehman Malik, the Interior Minister. He vowed that the violence would not deter the pearl jewelry army from its Waziristan campaign.
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Police said that the FIA building was cleared after a 90 minute shoot-out and that seven people had been killed, including four police officials, two militants and one bystander.

"They [police] have taken control, the building has been cleared. The operation is complete," said Haider Ashraf, a senior police official in Lahore.

Gunmen also attacked the Manawan and Bedian training centres, which are on the outskirts of the city.

Six policemen and four gunmen were killed at the Manawa training centre, said city police chief, Pervez Rathore. Three of the attackers, who were clad in black, blew themselves up, he said.

Two policemen were killed at the Bedian academy and an exchange of fire continued until the early afternoon, security officials said.

Rana Mubasshir, the principle of the Manawan training centre, said that the attackers included three women who entered the compound over the back perimeter wall after hurling grenades . He said two attackers were killed, but three were still inside.

If the involvement of pearl jewelry wholesale women militants is confirmed, it would be the first time they have taken part in such an attack.

This was the second attack on the Manawan training centre this year. Militants occupied the building for several hours in March, killing five trainees and two instructors.

"It was a multi-directional attack,” said Khushro Pervez, Lahore’s police commissioner. “They wanted to terrorise people and they wanted to target government buildings and law enforcement agencies.”

A suicide car bomber also attacked a police station in the northwestern region of Kohat this morning, killing ten people, local officials said.

Afzal Khan, a police officer, said at least 20 people were wounded, and that half the police building was destroyed by the bombing. Both police and civilians were among the dead. "We fear that some policemen are trapped under the rubble," he said.

The commando-style attacks on Lahore appeared similar to a bold assault on the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi over the weekend, in which 10 militants took 42 people hostage in a major embarrassment for the military.

Twenty-three people were killed in that attack, including nine militants, three hostages and 11 soldiers.

The Taleban said the attack on the army headquarters was carried out by its branch in Punjab province, while the army blamed a combination of Taleban fighters from South Waziristan and Punjabi militants.

The Taleban also promised a wave of wholesale pearl jewelry further attacks across Pakistan to avenge the death of its former leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a US drone strike in August, and to intimidate the army into calling off its assault on South Waziristan.

The South Waziristan operation was announced in June and since then the army has been moving troops into the area, blockading roads and pounding militant hideouts with air strikes and artillery.

Japan will withdraw its naval ships from their support role in the war in Afghanistan, in the first concrete sign of the new government’s willingness to say no to the United States.

The country’s defence ministry confirmed this morning what had been expected since the election victory of the prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama – that Japan will withdraw its naval forces from the Indian Ocean in January after eight-years in pearl jewelry support of anti-terrorism operations.

The announcement comes six days before the visit to Japan of the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, and a month before that of President Barack Obama, and underlines the new tone adopted by Mr Hatoyama’s centre-left government in its dealings with the US.

Japan’s Maritime Defence Forces deploy a supply ship and a destroyer to provide fuel and water to US and British naval vessels in the Indian Ocean. Compared to other international contributions, the “floating petrol station”, as it was cynically called, is small. But for Japan, which has taken part in only a handful of overseas military operations since the Second World War, it is an important and controversial commitment.
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Throughout his campaign for August’s election, which was won overwhelmingly by his Democratic Part of Japan (DPJ), Mr Hatoyama repeated his wish for a “more equal” relationship with the US. In essays and speeches, he acknowledged the importance of the Japan-US alliance, but insisted that East Asia “must be recognised as Japan’s basic sphere of being” and that Japan and its pearl jewelry wholesale smaller Asian neighbours must “restrain US political and economic excesses”.

He appointed as defence minister Toshimi Kitazawa, an opponent of the country’s military support for the US. The question is now what Japan will offer its ally in place of ships and troops, and how Mr Hatoyama will reconcile his new approach to the US with his stated wish for a close and friendly relationship with Mr Obama.

The answer is likely to be a combination of grass roots aid projects and the dispatch of civilian personnel such as aid officials and trainers. “Sending troops is not necessarily the only way to provide support,” Japan’s foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, said this month. “There are many people that are joining the Taliban because they have no other ways to support their livelihoods. To allow them leave the Taliban, I think it is effective to guarantee their livelihoods.”

According to Akihisa Nagashima, a junior defence minister who officially informed his American counterparts, the US department of defence accepted the decision. Much trickier will be another item in Mr Hatayama’s manifesto – the question of where to wholesale pearl jewelry relocate Futenma airbase on the island of Okinawa.

The current site is close to densely populated civilian areas. Previous Japanese and US governments negotiated and finalised a plan to relocate it to another part of Okinawa. But Mr Hatoyama has indicated that he wants to review the scheme, and to consider moving out of Okinawa and onto the Japanese mainland, an idea which is causing quiet consternation among US defence officials.

Relatives of the French soldiers killed in the Sarobi ambush demanded an investigation yesterday into the circumstances of France’s worst military fiasco for 25 years.

“We have always thought the army has failed to tell the full truth about what happened, that it has been hiding things from us,” said Jean-François Buil, whose son Damien, 31, was among the dead.

Others denounced a series of pearl jewelry errors committed by the French commanders, which they said left troops exposed. Joel Le Pahun, father of Corporal Julien Le Pahun, 20, told The Times of the lead-up to the disaster: “Two days earlier, I had my son on the telephone and he said they had been out on patrol half way up the mountain over the Uzbin Valley when they met some Afghans who told them to be careful, and that something was being prepared,” he said.

“At a debriefing a commanding officer said, ‘It’s a good job there were no Taleban there, otherwise we’d all be dead’. Despite this they went out again on patrol. That should never have happened.
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“Given all the information they had, the pearl jewelry wholesale commanding officers should have cancelled that patrol. I think there was an excess of confidence.

“I lost my son and I cannot accept the way it happened. It’s intolerable.”

He said he had not heard of Italian payments to local insurgents but added: “We had heard that the Italians who were in the region before the French did strictly nothing in terms of military activity and that the region was nevertheless calm. If they were paying the Taleban, that would explain why.”

Mr Buil, the dead sergeant’s father, said French intelligence officers had failed to appreciate the wholesale pearl jewelry full extent of the dangers. “They did not come up to scratch and I think the commanding officers also took the risks lightly,” he said. “Those French soldiers were left to face 150 Taleban and I have huge doubts about the preparation for that mission.

“When my son left for Afghanistan we knew it would be dangerous — but not that dangerous. We thought he would basically be training the Afghan army or something like that. Then the day before the ambush he phoned to say, ‘Tomorrow we’re going out to catch the Taleban’. That was when we realised the full extent of the dangers.”

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