When heavily armed militants attacked a naval dock in Karachi’s sea port this past Saturday night they thought they were targeting an American aircraft carrier, but instead they found themselves inside a Pakistan Navy frigate, which was populated by much more heavily armed soldiers than they had anticipated fighting.
Three jihadis were killed, four were captured and another three arrested in the attack.
Two Pakistan Navy guards were wounded in the fighting.
“It was a complete failure, they did not do any kind of damage, some were captured and we caught more, seven so far and may be more to come. They were well-equipped and came with the intention of taking a ship into their custody but they were caught in the initial stages,” a senior source close to the investigation told the Telegraph.
Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, the militant group unveiled by Zawahiri last week to demonstrate his clout despite the rise of Islamic State (Isil), claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday and said former Pakistan Navy men had carried it out.
“The Naval officers who were martyred on Saturday in the attack on Karachi were al-Qaeda members. They were trying to attack American marines and their cronies”, the group said in a statement.
It added that militants had successfully seized an American vessel but were thwarted by Pakistan Navy troops. “The Pakistani military men who died defending enemies of the Muslim nation…are cursed with hell”, it added.
Investigators denied that the all the attackers had belonged to the Pakistani Navy and said only one militant, who was killed in the fighting, was a former naval rating.
They also said they were sceptical over whether al-Qaeda had any involvement in the attack and suspected it was claiming credit for another group’s work. “If they did it why would they wait until Thursday to claim it?” said one source.
The raid is the second attack on the Pakistan Navy’s Karachi base in the last three years. In 2011 up to 20 Taliban militants attacked the port, killing 11 naval troops and a paramilitary soldier in a 12-hour siege. Two patrol planes given to Pakistan by the United States were destroyed in the attack.
ww2 relic
Hey!It’s big and it floats.
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Hey its a destroyer, not an aircraft carrier.!! And not one of ours.
They weren’t martyred,, they got the DARWIN AWARD!!! A little chlorine in the Muslim gene pool!!
old news
Think of the very last thing you’d ever want to attack. Yep a US Navy aircraft carrier, that’d be it. Just think of all the armament and naval personnel, plus the other vessels and military attached to them in the carrier group.
You know, the FIRST clue would be —it DIDN’T have any airplanes on it!!!
I love it!!!
The above picture is not an aircraft carrier, bucko! Aircraft Carriers do not have low pointy decks . This is probably a foreign (not U.S. Navy) frigate, light cruiser or a destroyer. Besides that, I doubt that a pirate could throw a line as high as a carriers deck to scale it. Even if they did have a grappling hook or a line propelling rifle. And even if they were to come to close with their craft it would be sucked under the hull due to negative draw of the ship pass through the water.