Taliban stormed air base that stored nuclear weapons

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Heavily armed Taliban militants wearing suicide vests under military uniforms stormed a key Pakistan Air Force base believed to have nuclear weapons, triggering a fierce gunbattle that left nine attackers and a soldier dead and parts of the complex ablaze.

The terrorists sneaked into the PAF’s Minhas airbase at Kamra in Punjab province, 60 km northwest of Islamabad, at 2 am Thursday and tried to blow up fighter jets like F-16s and Chinese made JF-17 aircraft.

The attack came just a day after US defence secretary Leon Panetta expressed fears about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. A New York Times report claimed PAF Minhas, in Punjab’s Attock district, was one of the locations where Pakistan’s nuclear stockpiles are stored.

Pakistani officials, however, emphatically denied that any nuclear weapons were kept at Minhas. A PAF spokesman said the nine attackers were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests.

The commander of the air base, Air Commodore Muhammad Azam, was hit by a bullet in the shoulder while leading operations against the attackers.

The Aeronautical Complex assembles Mirage and, with Chinese help, JF-17 fighter jets.
Witnesses said the attackers entered the complex using the back entrance, taking advantage of the holiest night of Ramadan to remain undetected.

“Most of the men from the village were in mosques,” local resident Athar Abbas said.

“I heard three or four explosions. There was heavy gunfire. The militants may have used a village track and climbed over the wall”.

PAF Minhas, in the town of Kamra in Punjab province that lies 60 kilometres northwest of Islamabad, has been attacked twice before.

There has been a lull in recent attacks, but speculation is now heavy that Pakistan could bow to US demands for an operation against militants in their premier fortress of North Waziristan — the tribal belt on the Afghan border.