Taliban launches fresh attacks in Lahore, advances on road to Pakistan’s nuclear stores

Taliban gunmen attacked three law enforcement facilities in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore early Thursday, Oct. 15, their fifth large-scale strike in 10 days. At least 38 people were killed. Interior minister Rehman Malik announced a nationwide red alert. He said: “The enemy has started a guerilla war.”
debkafile‘s military sources report: Five days ago, Taliban gunmen and bombers hit Pakistan’s army headquarters in Islamabad and at the same time advanced on the northwestern Kohat road to Peshawar and a cluster of air bases holding its nuclear arsenal around Kamra in the North West Frontier Province.
Thursday, Taliban struck further northeast toward the Kamra nuclear center, aiming to cut it off from Islamabad, 150 kilometers east of Kohat. They have begun encircling the Sargodha air base, the location of nuclear warheads stores. En route, suicide attackers flattened a police station in the Saddar suburb of Kohat town, killing 10 people and wounding 20.
Taliban has stepped up the tempo of its large-scale assaults in an effort to throw central government and the military command off-balance as they prepare a major offensive against terrorist bastions in South Waziristan.
Lahore descended into chaos Thursday as one team of gunmen attacked the Federal Investigation Agency and took hostages before the attack was over, and two other groups struck police and commando training centers.
At the same time, an unidentified missile hit a Taliban compound in North Waziristan. At least four people were killed.
After the Oct. 10 siege of army HQ, which left 23 dead, Taliban warned that harsher acts were coming unless Pakistan called off its military operations against its strongholds and stopped working with the US.