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Pakistani security troops rushed to Karachi’s international airport. Credit Shakil Adil/Associated Press
KARACHI, Pakistan — Gunmen attacked a cargo and V.I.P. area of Karachi’s international airport late Sunday night, engaging in an extended firefight with security forces and killing at least six people, Pakistani officials said.
Security officials said that six to 10 attackers made it past security barriers at one of the airport’s cargo gates, close to runways. Local news networks reported the men were wearing security uniforms and rammed through security checkpoints in a van. Officials said that the attackers were using grenades and automatic weapons, and news reports said that at least two planes had caught fire, and huge fireballs were seen near the runway.
An official at Jinnah Hospital in Karachi, Dr. Seemi Jamaili, said that the militants killed at least six people, including four Airport Security Force guards and two airport employees. At least 16 people were reported injured, and all the city’s hospitals were put on alert, Dr. Jamaili said.
Early Monday, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, said that at least three of the attackers had been killed, and that the others were surrounded, though fighting continued.
Earlier, the military reported that all airline passengers and crew members at the airport had been safely evacuated. Flights continued to be canceled or diverted away from Karachi.
It was not immediately known whether the gunmen specifically meant to attack that part of the airport, Pakistan’s largest, or had been stopped by airport security on their way to somewhere else. Senior government officials or wealthy Pakistanis often board private flights at the affected terminal.
“The target appears to be to create panic and damage the fleet,†said one government official, who said that spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing attack.
It was unclear who was behind the attack, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility, though initial suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban or one of its splinter groups.
A tentative peace process with the Taliban, begun by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government in February, has disintegrated in recent weeks. The militant group has split into at least two opposed factions, in part over disagreements about whether to negotiate with the government. The Pakistani Army renewed a campaign of airstrikes against the militants in North Waziristan two weeks ago, and factions of the Taliban were believed to be behind a deadly attack on a high-security military complex near Rawalpindi last week.
Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial hub and biggest city, has in recent years been increasingly contested by the Taliban and other militants. Many have moved in from the country’s northwestern tribal regions and have become embroiled in the chaotic and violent political turf battles that have wracked the city.
In separate violence, in a part of remote Baluchistan Province on the border with Iran, at least 23 Shiites were reported killed in a coordinated suicide bombing. The Associated Press quoted provincial officials as saying the attack had come as the victims were returning from a visit to Iran.
Although the Taliban have frequently been behind attacks on Shiites and other religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan, such violence in Baluchistan has more often been waged by other sectarian militias like Lashkar-e-Janghvi. Human rights officials have accused Pakistan’s military of aiding or turning a blind eye toward those groups, as they are considered its allies in a long war against Baluch separatists.
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