Eyewitness Report 7:00PM – Lahore Police Academy Siege

Eyewitness reports drafted by Farooq Tariq at 7:00pm Spokesperson Labor Party Pakistan, as shared by hom on the Peoples Resistance network

I am now at the compound where this whole incident took place. On the third floor where the four terrorists blew themselves. The body parts are every where, blood is spread all over. Police and army is not allowing anybody inside. Only the police photographer is taking the photographs inside. There are blood on the cloths hanging inside. The four terrorists were encircled here. They refused to surrender and finally after 8 hours, decided to blew themselves. I was told by a policeman that they had no more arms left with them. Here groups after group of police and rangers are raising slogans like Allah Akbar (god is great). They are posing as they have conquered another country.

Here I met Talib Hussain, president of the transport workers union, who was here since morning. His office is just in front of this compound. The office of the union was open in the morning. When he heard the first blast, they were terrified. Then the firing started. The first causality from the civilian was a member of the union, an unemployed conductor, now was driving a three wheelers. He was Waseem. He died on the spot. This terrified the whole area. The terrorists were inside the compound and firing and throwing hand grenades.

Talib told me that this went on for long time, we went behind our office. There were helicopters flying over. One helicopter landed behind our office. We were there and saw a person at one time running towards the helicopter, he was stopped by a ranger man, this person told him “Islami, Pakistan” he could not speak any other words. He was stopped, we also arrived there and then overpower him. He had a hand grenade and was taken away by police and rangers.

As I tried to arrive at this place after three, the terrorists had blown already. I was stopped by rangers. They would not let me go. I parked the car one side of the GT Road and went by foot to the area.

At the building, hundreds were around and police was keeping them away. Several journalists recognized me and took me inside the compound. The Inspector General of Police in Punjab was just starting the briefing. I saw several parts of body outside in the ground. There was a brain and some parts of the leg lying on floor full of dust and so on. I was told that the four terrorist blew themselves instead of courting arrest. I tried to go on the first and second floor but the police stopped. Anyhow, I went inside the ground floor of the main building. There are mainly two floors of this building which was in very bad shape. This was a government transport bus building. After privatization in early nineties, the building remain vacant because of its bad shape. One part of the building was given to private bus company, that is why union office was in front. Two year earlier, one part was occupied by police and they used it for training of the new police recruits.

As I went on the ground floor of this compound, I was surprised to see the awe full conditions of inside. In a big hall, there were lines of trunks, where the police recruits goods were packed, side by side there were a long lines of bed sheets lying on the floor where all these police recruits were sleeping. It seems that in this hall over 200 would be sleeping side by side, worst than any refugees camp. That is how the state treats its police constables. There were not many signs of bullets in this floor. It seems that the terrorists went straight up stare than occupying this floor.

As I went upstairs, every where broken pieces of glass were spread. On the corridors of the first floor, there was a lot of blood at one place, here one terrorist was killed and the body removed already. At this floor inside, there was also the same scene of lines of suite cases, trunks and bed sheets on the floor. Here the terrorists had made some ugly scenes. There were a lot of things upside down and a lot of bullet signs. But it was at the second floor, where the terrorist had blown themselves. They were encircled by police and rangers from all sides. The police and rangers did not allow us to move inside but what we could see from outside was awe full. There were body parts blown everywhere on the floor, walls and roof top. We do not know how many were blown up, but it seems at least four of them.

The terrorist did not hand them over but preferred to blow themselves.

I like to raise another question. That is the expertise of the special elite force that was involved in the encounter. This was a very simple building. One hall on the ground floor and two on top of it. Why it took eight hours to deal with a small gang of few terrorists? The top floor where terrorists blew had one main hall. The police could have used any mean to blow them easily. Anyhow, the police seemed jubilant and were very happy.

Who were they? From where they have come from? How many were they? What the real demands were? We may not know the answers, All we know that they were from any religious extremist group that was trying to send a message that the state officials are not safe.

Farooq Tariq
Spokesperson, Labour Party Pakistan