Militants flee after firing on Karachi airport training facility

Two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on Karachi’s airport academy and fled after Pakistani forces retaliated, a spokesman for the Airports Security Force said today.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Separately, a spokesman for the civil aviation authority said Karachi airport had resumed flights after a brief suspension.

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Smoke rises today from buildings at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan, as fires from the attack overnight yesterday continued to smoulder. A fresh assault has been mounted at the airport today. Photograph: Rehan Khan/EPA

Earlier it was reported that gunmen had tried to enter the facility from two different entrances, but Pakistani security forces fought back, a spokesman for the Airport Security Force (ASF) said.

The attack comes less than two days after gunmen had laid siege to the airport in an attack that left some 34 people dead, including 10 Taliban gunmen.

“The ASF academy is under attack. There is gunfire. The extent of the damage is not clear,” a senior official at the Federal Investigation Agency said.

It was not immediately clear what group was behind the latest attack. A Reuters correspondent near the airport of Pakistan’s commercial capital heard gunfire and saw at least four ambulances rushing to the scene.

Pakistan’s air force had earlier today launched air strikes in tribal areas on the Afghan border, killing at least 15 militants, the army said.

A group of 10 militants disguised as security forces had stormed into the airport near Karachi, a city of 18 million, on Sunday night. The assault has all but destroyed prospects for peace talks between the Pakistani Taliban and the government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

“Nine terrorist hideouts were destroyed by early morning military air strikes near the Pakistan-Afghan border,” the army’s press wing said.

No other details were immediately available.

The Pakistani Taliban, an alliance of insurgent groups fighting to topple the government and set up a Islamist state, said they had carried out the attack in Karachi in response to air strikes on their strongholds near the Afghan border.

The assault on the airport brought the government a step closer to a broader army operation in the tribal North Waziristan region where the al Qaeda-linked Taliban are based.

The army has periodically bombed suspected insurgent hideouts in the region, but has yet to launch a major offensive to flush out militants.

At Karachi airport, rescue workers recovered the bodies of seven more people who had trapped inside a cargo building, leaving some 34 people dead in total after the Sunday night attack.

“The bodies are badly charred beyond identification,” said a morgue official who asked not to be named.

Dr Seemi Jamali, from Karachi's Jinnah Hospital, said the the charred remains of seven victims were taken there this morning.

The head of the Karachi Municipal Corporation, Rauf Akhtar Farooqi, said the bodies were burned beyond recognition.

Agencies