Karachi: Troops appeared to be ending a Taliban siege of Pakistan's naval air force headquarters on Monday after the most audacious militant attack in the unstable, nuclear-armed country since the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
More than 20 Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed the PNS Mehran base in the city of Karachi on Sunday, blowing up at least one aircraft and battling troops for more than 12 hours.
Thirteen personnel were killed.
Security officials, however, said the operation was in the final stage and Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters that a major area in the base had been cleared.
Operation nearing an end
"The operation has not finished yet, but is nearing an end," one security official said. "It's in the final stages."
The assault casts fresh doubt on the Pakistani military's ability to protect its bases following an attack on the army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi in 2009, and is a further embarrassment following the surprise raid by US special forces on the Al Qaida leader's hideout north of Islamabad on May 2.
Earlier, a Pakistani navy spokesman said 12 security officers have been killed in fighting with militants who have been holed up inside a naval base in Karachi for more than 12 hours.
The team of militants stormed the Naval Station Mehran in Pakistan's largest city late Sunday.
Still there Monday morning
On Monday morning, some of them were still there, occupying at least one building.
Navy spokesman Irfan ul Haq said Monday that 11 navy officers and one paramilitary ranger had been killed, while 14 people had been injured.
Taliban gunmen armed with rockets and explosives stormed a major naval air base in the heart of Pakistan's biggest city, destroying two US-made surveillance aircraft.
Pakistani commandos cornered a group of Taliban militants in an office building on a naval base Monday after the insurgents raided the complex the night before.
The raid was the worst assault on a military base since the army headquarters was besieged in October 2009, piling further embarrassment on the armed forces three weeks after US troops killed Osama Bin Laden under their noses.
20 militants
Up to 20 militants crept into the base from three sides under the cover of night late Sunday, triggering gunbattles and a series of explosions. Twelve hours later, officials said they were still battling to restore order.
By mid-morning, fire crews had doused towering flames over the PNS Mehran, a base of the Pakistani navy's air arm in the teeming port city of Karachi.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the "terrorists" sneaked into the base from three points adjacent to residential areas in the city of 16 million people, whose port is a vital hub for Nato supplies bound for Afghanistan.
"A (single-storey) building in the premises is still under their occupation from where they are exchanging fire with our soldiers," Malik told reporters.
"It is not just an attack on a navy establishment, it is an attack on Pakistan," Malik added, warning that those who sympathise with the Taliban and Al Qaida should instead "join hands with us to save our country".
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, who have stepped up attacks to avenge the May 2 death of Bin Laden, claimed to have dispatched 15 to 20 suicide bombers equipped to fight for a week.
Osama's martyrdom
"We had already warned after Osama's martyrdom that we will carry out even bigger attacks," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
"Our people present inside are all fedayeen (suicide bombers). They are 15 to 20 in number and were sent after proper planning. They can fight for one week and until they embrace martyrdom," he said.
The Al Qaida leader was killed by US commandos in a garrison town north of Islamabad, in a raid that humiliated Pakistan's security establishment. The militants' attack deep inside Karachi underlined the military's vulnerability.
"They have taken up positions at one place. I hope that soon we will succeed in catching them, dead or alive," navy spokesman Commander Salman Ali told AFP hours after the attack began at around 10:45 pm (1745 GMT) on Sunday.
Blasts early Monday
An AFP reporter heard several more blasts and gunshots early Monday, and helicopters flying overhead.
Ali said six navy officials and one paramilitary personnel had been killed in exchanges of fire with the militants, who he said numbered from 10 to 15.
"They have destroyed two P-3C Orion aircraft," he added. The United States delivered the two maritime patrol aircraft to PNS Mehran only last June.
No hostages
Ali told AFP that no foreigners were on the base at the time of the attack and said there was not thought to be a hostage situation.
"No known hostages are there but I can't say if they (the attackers) have taken one or two hostages inside."
Speaking to the ARY television station, Ali said: "The attackers first fired rockets. The terrorists also used small bombs and now they are firing with sophisticated weapons. They are inside and still resisting."
In October 2009, Taliban militants besieged the army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi for two days, killing 22 people and raising serious questions over why it took the military so long to put down the assault.
US troops supplies
Karachi is Pakistan's financial capital and its port is used by Nato to ship supplies to the estimated 130,000 US-led foreign troops fighting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The assault was the fourth on the navy in Karachi in a month. On April 28, four naval personnel and a passing motorcyclist were killed in a bombing, two days after four other people were killed in two navy bus bombings.
Last week, a Saudi diplomat was shot dead as he drove to his consulate in Karachi just days after attackers threw grenades at the mission.
Despite anger in Pakistan over Bin Laden's killing, US President Barack Obama told the BBC he was ready to order a similar mission if another high-value target was discovered in Pakistan, or anywhere else.
