Badaber attack: Three martyred personnel laid to rest
The martyred security personnel were laid to rest with full military honour.
PESHAWAR (Web Desk / Reuters) - Funeral prayers of three PAF, Army personnel and three other civilians, who got martyred in yesterday’s terrorist attack on Badaber airbase camp in Peshawar, were offered on Saturday morning.
Sepoy Muhammad Suhaib has been laid to rest in Rawalpindi, Imam Fazal Amin and PAF personnel Israrullah in Mardan and junior technician Shan Shaukat was buried in Faisalabad with full military honour.
On the other hand, martyred Captain Isfand Yar Bokhari’s body has been shifted to Attock.
On Friday, suspected TTP militants launched a brazen attack on the PAF airbase camp military, killing 29 people including 16 who were gunned down inside a mosque during prayers. In addition to the dead, another 29 people were wounded.
All 13 attackers were killed after an hours-long firefight at the Badaber base.
More than 2,000 employees were on the base at the time of the attack, the army spokesperson said. The attackers first stormed the guard room and then tried to move toward its administrative block, but were stopped by security forces, he said.
The base was established in 1960s but in recent years has mostly been used as a residence for air force employees and officers from Peshawar.
Bajwa said the assault was quickly repulsed because of timely and coordinated action by security forces. He told reporters in Peshawar that "the attackers came from Afghanistan," though he stressed he did not mean that the government in Kabul was behind the assault.
Intercepted communications indicated that the attackers were being handled by superiors in Afghanistan, he said, but would not elaborate further because Pakistan s spy agency was investigating the evidence. It was also possible that the attackers were assisted by someone on the inside, he added.
Friday s attack came a day after Pakistan reported the arrest of a militant figure behind a recent failed attempt to target an air force facility in Kamra, also in Pakistan s northwest. The suspect, Umar Hayat, was currently being questioned, said counterterrorism officer Junaid Khan in the southern port city of Karachi, where the arrest took place.
Also Thursday, police in Karachi reported the arrest of Syed Sheaba Ahmad, a former air force pilot who allegedly helped finance al-Qaida s newly formed South Asian affiliate.
The Pakistan air force has been playing an important role in the fight against militants since June 2014, when the army launched a much-awaited operation in North Waziristan, a restive tribal area along the Afghanistan border. Peshawar is the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders the tribal area. The air force frequently targets militant hideouts in the tribal area and elsewhere.
The army says it has killed more than 3,000 militants so far in the North Waziristan offensive. The region was once considered to be the headquarters of the Tehreek-e-Taliban, which has been targeting security forces and public places in an effort to topple the elected government.
