Prison in Dera Ismail Khan was attacked by waves of gunmen wearing police uniforms who freed hundreds of Islamists
A massive jailbreak in Pakistan in which up to 300 Islamic militants escaped could lead to a wave of similar attempts to free detained extremists, security experts and officials have warned.
The prison, in the western city of Dera Ismail Khan, was attacked on Monday night with suicide bombs, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and waves of gunmen wearing police uniforms.
Authorities said 24 wanted terrorists were among those freed. Six policemen were killed in the two-hour firefight.
The attack, which was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), underlines the continuing weakness of agencies charged with maintaining security and countering violent extremism in the troubled south Asian state. There are scores of similar detention facilities across the region where poorly trained, badly equipped police and prison personnel oversee thousands of militant prisoners.
Last week around 500 militants, including many convicted senior members of al-Qaida waiting to be executed, were freed in a similarly brazen attack in Iraq. Waves of militants attacked the infamous Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, using tactics almost identical to those employed in Dera Ismail Khan. A statement of responsibility issued in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was later posted on a jihadist forum.
"There is no evidence of any co-ordination as such but one could reasonably assume there is a contagion effect. It's a bit like hijacking in the 1970s and 1980s," said Magnus Ranstorp, a respected expert at the Swedish National Defence College.
Imtiaz Gul, a security analyst and author in Islamabad, said the Pakistani Taliban, a coalition of different groups largely based in the restive semi-autonomous zones along the border with Afghanistan, would have been aware of the operation in Iraq last week. "All these groups watch one another. They pick up knowledge, learn lessons, replicate tactics … This will keep happening," Gul said.
One western security official in Pakistan, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the prisons as "low-hanging fruit" for militants and said intelligence services across the region were "well aware" of the problem.
There have been many breakouts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Some have significant strategic consequences: a mass escape in Yemen in 2006 saw almost the entire leadership of the al-Qaida affiliate in that country (AQAP) gain freedom – a key factor in the surge of violence there. AQAP now poses the most significant threat to the west, officials say.
Nearly 500 militants were also freed from a jail in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2011, fuelling the local insurgency.
"There is no strategy, no competence, no vision. So it's easy for these groups," said Gul.
One strike in Pakistan last week targeted an office of the main spy agency, the ISI, while another killed more than 50 Shia Muslims.
The jail in Dera Ismail Khan was supposed to be heavily guarded. Officials received a letter threatening an attack, but they did not expect it so soon, said Khalid Abbas, head of the prison department in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A curfew has been imposed and army units deployed.
Six Shia Muslim prisoners – the vast majority of Pakistanis are Sunni – were killed. Many of the high-profile prisoners who escaped belong to the violent sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jangvi, further evidence of increasing collaboration between groups.
The Pakistani Taliban have also claimed responsibility for the two attacks earlier this week and for the shootings of 10 mountaineers at base camp on a famous peak, Nanga Parbat, last month.
Hopes that the election of a new government in Pakistan, led by third-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, might lead to less violence, have been dashed. Some analysts have suggested the ambivalent position taken towards the Taliban by some high-profile Pakistani politicians might have emboldened militants.
Imran Khan, the former cricketer turned conservative prime ministerial candidate, said negotiating with the extremists was the only way to end violence in the restive western border zones.
In April 2012, Taliban militants armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades battled their way into a prison in the city of Bannu in north-west Pakistan, freeing close to 400 prisoners, including at least 20 described by police as very dangerous insurgents. After that attack, militants said they had been helped by insiders in the security services. An inquiry later found there were far fewer guards on duty than there should have been and those who were there lacked sufficient ammunition.
One of the militants freed in that attack, Adnan Rasheed, recently gained attention by writing a letter to the teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban last year in an attempt to kill her. Rasheed said he wished the attack had not happened, but told Malala that she was targeted for speaking ill of the Taliban. Reuters new agency has reported that Rasheed was the mastermind behind this latest attack.
Top jihadi jailbreaks and escapees
The most high-profile: Abu Yahya, a senior al-Qaida propagandist and organiser, won global renown among militants for escaping from the high-security US-run detention centre at Bagram, in Afghanistan in 2005. He was killed by a drone strike last year.
The most damaging: In February 2006, Naseer Abdul Karim Wuhayshi and 22 other suspected al-Qaida members broke out of a jail in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. They went on to build the affiliate of the group which now is seen as posing the biggest threat to the west.
The most numerous: More than 900 prisoners escaped from Sarposa prison in Kandahar after a suicide attacker crashed a huge carbomb into its gates in 2008.
The most unlikely: Rashid Rauf, a British militant detained by Pakistani security agencies escaped when allowed to go to the toilet by policemen accompanying him to a court in 2007. He was later killed.
The most like a film: In 2011, 35 prisoners facing terrorism charges escaped through a sewage pipe from a temporary jail in the Iraqi city of Mosul – as a convict does in the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption.
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