Militants Kill 7, Kidnap Four In Pakistan Power Station Attack Four Employees, Policeman Missing

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, April 2, (Agencies): Several dozen militants armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a power grid station in northwestern Pakistan before dawn Tuesday, killing seven people and taking four hostage, police said. 

The attack on the outskirts of Peshawar city occurred at around 2 a.m., said the local police chief in the area, Granullah Khan. The militants first killed two people at the scene of the attack and took nine with them, he said.

It was the latest audacious assault underscoring rising violence in the northwest as Pakistan prepares to hold general and provincial elections on May 11, which are due to mark the country’s first democratic transition of power.

Around 50 militants targeted the plant in Badh Bher a suburb of Peshawar, a key electoral battleground and the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which is rife with al-Qaeda-linked militants and Taleban insurgents.

“They attacked the power station at around 2:30 am (2130 GMT). They killed two officials on the spot and abducted 10 others,” Javed Khan, a senior police official in the area, told AFP.

“They threw five dead bodies of the kidnapped officials in the fields close to the power house on Monday morning. Five others are still missing.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

A spokesman for the Peshawar Electricity Supply Company (PESCO) said four of its staff and three policemen were killed.

“One PESCO employee and one policeman were killed on the spot. The 

militants then kidnapped seven PESCO employees and three policemen. Later, we found the bodies of three PESCO officials and two policemen,” said Shaukat Afzal.

“Four power house employees and one policeman are still missing.”

The attack shut down electricity for five hours, affecting around 100,000 people in surrounding areas, the spokesman said. “We later restored electricity in those areas through alternate sources,” Afzal said.

There are fears that rampant insecurity could prove a major challenge for the vote, not least in Peshawar, home to 2.5 million on the edge of the tribal belt on the Afghan border, Pakistan’s premier Taleban and Al-Qaeda stronghold.

The Tirah Valley has offered Pakistan’s umbrella Tehreek-e-Taleban (TTP) a new base in the tribal district of Khyber, beyond the reach of ground troops and posing a heightened threat to Peshawar.

The attack served as a reminder that Pakistan’s leaders have failed to tackle a Taleban insurgency that remains potent despite a series of security crackdowns.

Pakistan’s Taleban, which is close to al-Qaeda, has threatened to escalate violence ahead of the polls, including attacks on political rallies.

Pakistan’s military has failed to break the back of the Taleban, despite numerous offensives against their strongholds in the semiautonomous tribal areas near the Afghan border. Arab Times