Pakistani Air Force personnel carry coffins of foreign tourists as they are unloaded from a C-130 plane on arrival at Chaklala airbase in Rawalpindi.
PESHAWAR: Gunmen stormed a mountaineering base camp in northern Pakistan yesterday and shot dead nine foreign trekkers and a Pakistani guide as they rested during an arduous climb up one of the world’s tallest peaks, police said.
The night-time raid — which killed five Ukrainians, three Chinese and a Russian — was among the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in a decade and underscored the growing reach of militants in a highland region once considered secure.
One of the victims also held a US passport, a US official said, without giving further details.
The deaths call into question the future of foreign mountaineering and trekking expeditions, which provide the last vestige of international tourism in a country on the frontline of Al Qaeda and Taliban violence.
The climbers were staying at a base camp for Nanga Parbat, which at 8,126 metres is the second highest mountain in Pakistan and the ninth highest in the world. The base camp is at Fairy Meadows in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Kashmir.
Police said a 15-strong gang of attackers wearing uniforms used by a local paramilitary force arrived at about 1am at a group of tents and ramshackle huts used by hikers scaling the flanks of the snow-covered peak.
The assailants shot dead a Pakistani guard and held other workers at gunpoint, a senior official from the northern Gilgit-Baltistan province said. A Chinese climber managed to escape. “The gunmen held the staff hostage and then started killing foreign tourists and made their escape,” the official said.
The bodies of the foreigners were transported by helicopters to Gilgit airport from the area and later flown to capital Islamabad, officials said.
It was the first time foreign tourists had been attacked in the province of Gilgit-Baltistan, where the convergence of the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan ranges creates a stunning landscape explored by only a trickle of the most intrepid mountaineers.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned “these inhuman and cruel acts”, ordered a thorough investigation and called for the culprits to be brought to justice, the government said.
While Gilgit-Baltistan has seen deadly sectarian violence targeting Pakistan’s Shia minority, foreigners have never previously been targeted in such a remote part of the region.
Pakistan’s Taliban movement and a smaller militant group both claimed responsibility. The shootings, which followed several deadly bombings in different parts of Pakistan in the past week, pose a fresh challenge for the new government of Sharif, who is battling accusations that his calls for dialogue with insurgents amount to appeasing violent extremists.
The deaths of the Chinese are a particular blow for Pakistan, which hosted Chinese Premier Li Keqiang last month in a bid to boost trade ties with the Asian giant via their shared border in Gilgit-Baltistan.
China issued a statement condemning the attack and calling for Pakistan to “severely punish” the perpetrators.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told parliament he had sacked Gilgit-Baltistan’s police chief and another provincial official, an unusual step in Pakistan where senior officials are rarely held accountable for lapses in security.
The move did little to silence critics who asked how gunmen could have slipped past security forces at check points meant to scrutinise visitors to the sensitive mountain region bordering Kashmir.
There were conflicting claims of responsibility for the attack. A Pakistani militant group known as Jundullah, with a track record of attacks in the province, was the first to say it was behind the raid.
“These foreigners are our enemies and we proudly claim responsibility for killing them, and will continue such attacks in the future,” Jundullah spokesman Ahmed Marwat said by telephone.
Pakistan’s Taliban movement, which has its centre of gravity closer to the Afghan border, said it had shot the trekkers in retaliation for a US drone strike in May that killed its second in command, Wali-ur-Rehman.
“We wanted to seek revenge for the killing of our leader in the drone attack,” said Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan. “Our attacks on foreigners will continue to protest drone strikes.”
Rehman died on May 29 in a US drone attack on a house in North Waziristan, the most notorious Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan on the Afghan border. Rehman, who had a $5m US bounty on his head, was accused by Washington of organising attacks against US and Nato forces in Afghanistan and wanted in connection with a suicide attack on an American base in Afghanistan in 2009 that killed seven CIA agents.
It was not immediately possible to reconcile the competing claims. Jundullah and the much larger Pakistani Taliban are among loosely aligned militant groups that frequently share personnel, tactics and agendas. Claims for specific incidents are often hard to verify.
Sharif has previously advocated peace talks with the Taliban and he criticised the US drone strike that killed Rehman, echoing long-held Pakistani complaints that the US campaign violates national sovereignty.
Reuters/AFP
