RAWALPINDI ? Militants were Saturday holding up to 15 people hostage near Islamabad after a bid to storm Pakistan's army headquarters left six soldiers and four attackers dead, officials said.
Up to 10 suspected Taliban gunmen armed with automatic weapons and grenades drove up to the compound and shot their way through one checkpost in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, before being stopped by troops at a second post.
Four militants were killed but at least four managed to flee during the fierce firefight, barricading themselves into an office just outside the compound, where gunfire continued to ring out as soldiers swarmed the area.
The siege in the heart of Pakistan's military establishment comes as militant attacks surge, with analysts saying the Taliban are trying to deter an army offensive into their tribal stronghold along the Afghan border.
"Eight to ten terrorists were involved in this attack. Four of them have been killed while six of our security personnel were martyred," the military's spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told the private Geo TV station.
He said that up to five gunmen had escaped and "have taken some security personnel as hostages."
"Security forces have surrounded the terrorists. We are trying to recover the hostages safely," he said, adding: "According to our assessment, the number of hostages is 10 to 15."
"One should not be surprised if Tehreek-e-Taliban network is involved in this attack," Abbas said.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a militant movement based in the tribal belt. The umbrella group of Islamist militia is blamed for most the attacks which have killed more than 2,200 people in the country in two years.
Security officials said the hostages were being held in a building linked to the military headquarters near the second checkpost.
An AFP reporter at the scene said that soldiers were perched at the ready on nearby rooftops, with all the lights blacked out in military and civilian buildings within one kilometer (half a mile) of the army headquarters.
Sporadic outbursts of gunfire were heard, but it was unclear where the shots were coming from or if an all-out assault to free the hostages was looming.
The audacious attack in the city adjoining the capital Islamabad unfolded just before midday, when militants dressed in army uniforms hurled grenades and opened fire at an entrance to the heavily fortified army command centre.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani strongly condemned the attack, a brief statement issued by his office in Islamabad said, and met the army chief and president to discuss the security situation.
The firefight came a day after a suicide car bomb killed 52 civilians at a busy market in the northwest city of Peshawar.
Government ministers blamed the suicide attack on the Taliban, who have vowed to avenge the death of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone missile attack in August.
Police officials said that security had been beefed up in Islamabad amid fears of more insurgent strikes.
The military is wrapping up a fierce offensive against Taliban rebels in the northwestern Swat valley launched in April, with the army now poised to begin a similar assault in the nearby semi-autonomous tribal belt.
Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion have carved out boltholes and training camps in the remote Pakistani mountains, with the TTP leadership also holed up in the rugged terrain.
Several bomb blasts in Pakistan in the past two-and-a-half weeks have killed dozens, with the Taliban threatening to unleash bigger assaults.
The TTP claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Monday on a UN office in Islamabad which killed five aid workers.
There was a lull in bomb attacks after Baitullah Mehsud's death in an August 5 US drone strike, but analysts had warned that the new Taliban leadership would likely be keen to show their strength with fresh, dramatic strikes.
