RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN — A brazen siege on Pakistan's military nerve center by gunmen in army uniforms ended early today when Pakistani commandos rescued 30 hostages held for 18 hours.
Three hostages and two commandos were killed in the raid on a building in the army headquarters compound in Rawalpindi, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.
Four militants were killed, including one who was shot before he could detonate a vest packed with explosives in a room full of hostages, Abbas said. Most of the captives were security officers.
A fifth militant, identified as a leader of the group, was captured.
The commando raid was preceded by a furious firefight Saturday that left four attackers and six military personnel dead, including a brigadier general and a lieutenant colonel responsible for security at the compound.
By late Saturday, five gunmen had holed up with the hostages in a security building.
The initial attack late Saturday morning, which lasted about 90 minutes, illustrated the militants' ability to launch assaults anywhere in the violence-racked nation, even in the epicenter of its vaunted security establishment.
It was the third major attack in less than a week, each aimed at a very different target: a United Nations building in the capital, a crowded market in a large northwestern city, and the home base of this nuclear-armed nation's military.
About 11:30 a.m., Abbas said, the gunmen drove up in a white Suzuki van to a perimeter checkpoint outside the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi, a garrison city adjacent to Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Armed with automatic rifles, the men opened fire at guards, jumped out of the van and took positions outside a second checkpoint about 330 yards down the road. Four of the military personnel killed in the siege died in that initial exchange of gunfire, Abbas said.
Officials said they believed that the use of uniforms, along with military plates on the van, helped the gunmen approach the first checkpoint without an initial reaction by guards.
The strategy was similar to that in an attack Monday at the U.N.'s World Food Program office in which five World Food Program employees were slain. The suicide bomber wore a Pakistani paramilitary police uniform and got through the heavily guarded main entrance by asking permission to use the restroom.
