At least two dead as armed militants storm police headquarters in Karachi

A gun battle was continuing in the Pakistani city of Karachi late on Friday after militants with hand grenades, rockets and automatic weapons stormed the main police headquarters.

The sound of gunfire and grenades rocked the heart of the port city, and at one point a huge explosion was heard inside the station.

“They used a rocket on the gate,” the interior minister, Rana Sanaullah, told Samaa TV. “Terrorists are armed with grenades and other weapons.”

Police snipers took up positions nearby and all lights in the area were switched off.

At least two people were killed and several others wounded, officials said. There were also reports that hostages had been taken by the assailants.

The Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), took responsibility for the attack in a message sent by their spokesperson to journalists.

Sharjeel Memon, the Sindh province’s spokesperson, said the attackers had been surrounded although shooting and fighting were continuing after the attack, which came just weeks after a bomb blast at a police mosque in the country’s north-west killed more than 80 officers.

“Can’t exactly tell how many terrorists have entered but there are at least more than five,” Dep Insp Gen Irfan Baloch told Reuters.

The police are frequent targets of attacks by militants from Pakistan’s Taliban and rebels from various separatist groups in the western Balochistan province.

The tightly guarded Karachi police office compound houses dozens of administrative and residential buildings. Hundreds of officers live inside the compound with their families.

Karachi is Pakistan’s biggest city, a sprawling metropolis of more than 20 million people and the main trade gateway at its Arabian Sea port.

Low-level militancy, often targeting security checkpoints in the north and west, has been steadily rising since the Taliban seized control of neighbouring Afghanistan in August 2021.

Investigators blamed an affiliate of the Pakistani Taliban for the 31 January blast at a mosque inside a police compound in Peshawar.

The TTP share a common lineage and ideals with the Afghan Taliban.