Islamabad court suicide attack strikes rare terrorism blow in Pakistani capital

At least 11 people were killed and 24 wounded on Monday in a gun and suicide bomb attack at a court complex in the heavily-guarded Pakistani capital Islamabad, police said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, which came two days after the Pakistan Taliban announced a month-long ceasefire aimed at restarting stalled peace talks with the government.

Attacks within the capital have been very rare in recent years.

Islamabad police chief Sikandar Hayat told reporters firing broke out, followed by two suicide blasts. “All the [other] attackers fled, though one sustained injuries in the leg and back,” he said. An AFP reporter at the scene saw blood and human remains in the court complex.

The death toll was confirmed by other police officials and the spokeswoman for the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Ayesha Isani. Isani said 20 wounded had been brought to the institute, half of them in critical condition. The dead included a sessions judge, police said. Roads around the court, in a prosperous residential sector of the city popular with foreign residents, were sealed off as police and paramilitary forces carried out a search.

Lawyer Murad Ali Shah described the dramatic moment the carnage began.

“At 9am around 15 armed men surrounded the court compound. They entered the chamber and started firing,” he told AFP, adding that he had helped recover several bodies. “The attackers were armed with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades. They were wearing shalwar kameez and had long beards and long hair.”

On Sunday the Pakistani government announced it was halting air strikes against suspected Taliban hideouts in the country’s restive tribal areas along the Afghan border in response to the militants’ ceasefire. The government began peace talks with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) last month but the dialogue broke down after militants killed 23 kidnapped soldiers. The military responded with a series of air strikes in the northwestern tribal areas that left more than 100 insurgents dead, according to security officials.

Despite near-daily attacks by the militants and air strikes by the armed forces, Pakistan’s negotiators have insisted that the door for talks is still open.

The Taliban’s ceasefire announcement on Saturday was met with scepticism by analysts, who said it may have been a tactic to allow them to regroup after they had suffered heavy losses in air strikes.

The government has struck peace agreements with the Pakistani Taliban several times in the past but they have failed to yield lasting results.