ISLAMABAD - Militants dressed as paramilitary police killed nine foreign mountaineers and a Pakistani guide in an unprecedented attack in the Himalayas, the world's highest mountains in the far-flung north.
As many as 15 to 20 militants wearing Gilgit Scouts uniforms struck at Saturday night and killed Six Ukrainians and three Chinese climbers and one of their Pakistani guides by taking them out of their tents at a base camp near Bunar Nullah. One local guide was injured while one Chinese tourist also survived in the attack.
The climbers were staying at a base camp for Nanga Parbat, which at 8,126 metres (26,660 feet) is the second highest mountain in Pakistan and the ninth highest in the world. The base camp is at Fairy Meadows in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan, which borders China and Kashmir.
The area is not previously associated with violence or militancy. But these deaths call into question the future of foreign mountaineering and trekking expeditions, which provide the last vestige of international tourism in a country on the frontline of Al-Qaeda and Taliban violence.
Six Ukrainians and three Chinese were among the dead, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said. Ukraine's Ambassador to Pakistan Vladimir Lakomov earlier told AFP that five Ukrainians were killed. Nisar said the attackers "abducted two guides and through them reached the area. One guide was killed in the shootout. One is alive. He is now detained and being questioned," he said.
"The incident took place around 10pm (Saturday, 1700 GMT). They were mountaineers," Diamer police official Muhammed Naveed told AFP. "Gunmen came and opened fire on them. It is confirmed that they have been killed," he said.
Officials said the area was inaccessible by road. “The area is far flung and deep in the mountains. There is no connection by road and it is accessible only by mules, horses or on foot,” Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Syed Mehdi Shah said. “We have sent helicopters to the area. Police and paramilitary have surrounded the area. We have also taken help from the army,” he said.
Officials said that FC Northern Area had taken control of the area. “A search operation has been launched. All the entry and exit points have been sealed,” said Naveed.
The dead bodies were initially shifted to Chilas DHQ Hospital but later local police said that they were en route to Islamabad by mid-afternoon Sunday after helicopters were dispatched to the area.
Pakistan condemned the attack, but the killings will raise serious questions about security failures and embarrass a country already suffering from a dismal image abroad. The interior minister conceded there was no security escort for foreigners in that area of the mountains.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned "these inhuman and cruel acts", ordered a thorough investigation and called for the culprits to be brought to justice, the government said.
The top bureaucrat and top police official in Gilgit-Baltistan were on Sunday suspended, state TV said.
Officials also spoke to the Chinese and Ukrainian ambassadors to express their condolences, the foreign ministry said.
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has its centre of gravity closer to the Afghan border, said it had shot the trekkers in retaliation for a US drone strike in May that killed its second in command, Waliur Rehman. "One of our factions, Junoodul Hifsa, did it. It is to avenge the killing of Maulvi Waliur Rehman (in a US drone attack)," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP.
He said the attack was in response to the death of the group's deputy chief in a US drone strike near the Afghan border.
Ehsan told AFP that Junood ul-Hifsa was a new wing set up by the Taliban "to attack foreigners and convey a message to the world against drone strikes".
Earlier, another militant group known as Jundullah, with a track record of attacks in the Gilgit-Baltistan province, was the first to say it was behind the raid. "These foreigners are our enemies and we proudly claim responsibility for killing them, and will continue such attacks in the future," Jundullah spokesman Ahmed Marwat told Reuters by telephone. The same group has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in northern Pakistan in recent years, mostly on Shias.
It was not immediately possible to reconcile the competing claims.
Jundullah and the much larger Pakistani Taliban are among loosely aligned militant groups that frequently share personnel, tactics and agendas. Claims for specific incidents are often hard to verify. The TTP, a nebulous collection of factions, has been waging a domestic insurgency since July 2007 but is not previously known to have had a presence in Gilgit. Ehsan told AFP that Junoodul Hifsa was a new wing set up by the Taliban "to attack foreigners and convey a message to the world against drone strikes".
Waliur Rehman died on May 29 in a US drone attack on a house in North Waziristan, the most notorious Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan on the Afghan border. Wali, who had a $5 million US bounty on his head, was accused by Washington of organising attacks against US and Nato forces in Afghanistan and wanted in connection with a suicide attack on an American base in Afghanistan in 2009 that killed seven CIA agents.
Pakistan's government, which took office this month after historic elections, faces a massive array of problems related to a moribund economy and religious militancy. Nawaz Sharif has previously advocated peace talks with the Taliban and he criticised the US drone strike that killed Waliur Rehman, echoing long-held Pakistani complaints that the US campaign violates national sovereignty.
The Himalayas in northern Pakistan offer some of the most spectacular climbing in the world. Its peaks are a magnet for experienced mountaineers, often from Europe. While Gilgit-Baltistan has seen deadly sectarian violence targeting Shia Muslim minority, foreigners have never previously been targeted in such a remote part of the region, which officials said was inaccessible by road.
But foreigners have been targets in the past in other parts of the country. In 2002, 11 French engineers and technicians working on the construction of submarines for the Pakistan navy were killed along with three Pakistanis in a suicide bombing outside a hotel in the port city of Karachi. In 2009, gunmen attacked the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in the eastern city of Lahore. The latest killings followed an attack last weekend in Quetta, when a suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying women students before gunmen stormed the hospital treating survivors. More than 20 people were killed.
Authorities in GB arrested 25 local tour guides in connection with the killing of foreign tourists.
Security forces also took two eyewitnesses with them for questioning.