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Pakistan’s interior minister has urged the country to unite against insurgents after gunmen launched a deadly attack on a police academy in Lahore. Rehman Malik said the country had a choice between letting the Taleban take over and uniting to fight them.
He also pointed the finger at other extremist groups, while suggesting that a foreign state may have been involved.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s attack, which left at least 18 people dead…
It came less than a month after gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, killing six policemen.
Until this year, the city, Pakistan’s cultural capital, had remained relatively free of post-9/11 militant violence.
But Pakistan’s militants appear to be running riot, the BBC’s Damian Grammaticas reports from Lahore.
Here is the earlier story of the attack on the police academy.
Push may be coming to shove – and politicians will have to move beyond banal and trite declarations in their usual hope of getting swing votes from that small minority of Pakistan’s population dedicated to Islamist terror. It’s time to commit to the needs of the whole nation.
U.S. plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan will be coming into play over the next several months and it’s liable to be one of those trains that passes through town just once. You get on board – or you miss the ride.