Shoot Out at Pakistani Police School

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 30, 2009— -- Eight hours after about a dozen terrorists stormed inside, Pakistani police liberated their training facility outside the city of Lahore this afternoon, but not before gunmen injured 95 police recruits.

The interior ministry said at least six recruits were killed, although officials admitted privately that the toll would be significantly higher. Local TV channels have reported that as many as 29 police officers were killed.

Two groups of gunmen, one on foot and one in a van, entered the facility this morning at around 8:30 local time dressed in police uniforms and armed with assault rifles and grenades, according to an eyewitness. After the eight to 10 terrorists on foot started firing, the eyewitness told ABC News, a white van sped into the compound and stopped outside the ammunition depot.

In all, the eyewitness said, at least 13 gunmen breached minimal security on the outside of one of Lahore's largest police training grounds, taking over the building and battling with security forces until the afternoon.

Images broadcast live from the scene showed that the gunmen were well trained and better equipped than their victims, and police initially appeared scared and confused until elite commandos, paramilitary troops and Army rangers arrived later to reinforce them.

Pakistan's police force has long been underfunded, underequipped and used for political purposes by the government here.

U.S. officials said the best way to guarantee Pakistani stability is to build a modern police force that can reinforce the writ of democratically elected governments. And many analysts here believe that the best way to truly combat a rising insurgency in Pakistan is not through a military that has been focused on neighboring India but through a revamped police and civilian intelligence force that can focus on internal threats.

"In both Pakistan and Afghanistan, had U.S. policy focused on the police, on the civilian law enforcement agencies, after 9/11, perhaps, we wouldn't see Afghanistan in the situation it's in right now, and perhaps we wouldn't have seen the growth of militancy in Pakistan the way it is right now," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia Project director in Islamabad for the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization headquartered in Brussels.