Masked gunnies stormed a house and killed nine police cadets in Pakistain's eastern city of Lahore on Thursday, police said, the second attack on security forces claimed by the Taliban in relatively peaceful Punjab province in four days. The Pak Taliban said it was responsible and vowed more violence in the region.Lahore city police chief Aslam Tareen said three coppers were also maimed.
"At around 6 a.m., masked gunnies on three cycle of violences stormed the house and opened fire. The victims were trainees at the Punjab Jail Academy," Tareen said.
Many of the police were from the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
province near the border with Afghanistan, a hotbed of Pakistain's insurgency.
Taliban front man Ehsanullah Ehsan said the police from that region had been targeted because they treated Taliban detainees poorly.
"We were looking for them for a long time as their attitude with our people in jails is very inhuman and insulting," he said by telephone from
The Pak Taliban's threat of further attacks raised the prospect of more violence in a region that has been largely spared by bad boy trouble in recent years.
On Monday, gunnies killed six soldiers and a policeman at a riverside military encampment in eastern Pakistain, 100 km (60 miles) north of Lahore. The Pak Taliban also grabbed credit for that attack.