Adil Najam
The details of exactly what happened here are still sketchy. Except that this terrorist attack on the Emergency Ward of Lahore’s Jinnah Hospital was clearly related to the brutal attack of Ahmadis in Lahore earlier this week.
The basic facts of what we do know about this brutal terrorist attack are horrendous enough: four terrorists came in disguised as policemen and took control of the Emergency section of Jinnah Hospital where a number of people who had been injured in the earlier attack on Ahmadis in Lahore were admitted, as was one of the suspects of that attack (Muaz); the ensuing gun battle with the police was not pretty and left twelve people dead, including four policemen; eventually the terrorists were able to flee in safety.
Sketchy as itself is, the best account one can find right now of what happened is in The Express Tribune:
In an audacious attack, four terrorists entered the emergency ward at Jinnah hospital near midnight and began firing indiscriminately, killing 12 people, including four policemen. The terrorists then took patients, attendants and hospital staff hostage. The terrorists later fled.
Eyewitnesses described the terrorist as fair-complexioned and between the ages of 20 and 22. They are said to have entered the hospital premises camouflaged as police and eyewitnesses said they were riding a vehicle with an official number plate. Some police officials say the objective of the attack seems to have been either killing or securing the release of one of the terrorists responsible for Friday’s attack on the Ahmadi ibadatgah in Model Town, Muaz, who had been captured the same day and was under treatment at Jinnah hospital.
Responding to the hospital’s SOS, the police moved in soon after to cordon off the area and secure the hospital. For at least 30 minutes, the two sides traded fire. One of the terrorists is also said to have been shot in the leg.
One of the terrorists is said to have made his way to the rooftop of the hospital and from this vantage point, continued providing covering fire and picking out the policemen assembled in the hospital premises. Shortly after, the police brought in Armoured Personnel Carriers and Elite Forces reinforcements and managed to cordon off the area.
In order to prevent the terrorists from identifying the location of Muaz in the ICU, police say, they disconnected power supply to the hospital. Panicked by the firing and the dark, patients, their attendants and the hospital staff made for the exits, running for their lives.
In the ensuing melee, police sources say, the four terrorists made good their escape from the rear entrance of the hospital. As the police gave chase, there was a brief encounter between the two sides in the adjoining area of Hanjarwal, before the terrorists fled from there as well.
Initially, eyewitnesses said the terrorists used a police vehicle for their getaway but later, the police contradicted this claim. It is now being thought that since the car the attackers came in had a government number plate, that’s why the eyewitnesses were deceived. From the rounds left behind, the police are surmising that the four were armed with AK 47s as well as other guns.
The IG Punjab and other senior police officials reached the area to supervise the operation and soon after, managed to secure the building. Meanwhile, police sources said, Muaz was shifted to an undisclosed location.
However, independent analysts are dismissing the police’s theory of the terrorists wanting to secure Muaz’s release. Muaz, it is said, is a significant member of the Punjabi Tehreek-e-Taliban, originally from Muzzaffargarh, and the authorities expect him to render a great deal of useful information about terrorist networks in southern Punjab. However, since he was on life support in the ICU, analysts say, it is unlikely that his comrades could have transported him and must have meant to kill him.
Till the filing of this report, there were conflicting reports about the death toll. While the Jinnah hospital administration said 12 had been killed, DCO Lahore Sajjad Bhutta said between six and eight persons had been killed.
Jinnah hospital medical superintendent Dr Javed Akram requisitioned medical staff from other hospitals of the city to treat the injured.
Several of those injured in Friday’s attacks which killed more than 80 Ahmadis were under treatment in Jinnah Hospital.
Meanwhile, the IG Punjab says that Lahore has been put on high alert and all the entry and exit points to the city have been sealed.
Right now there are more questions than there are answers. And even more mayhem, panic and fear. Exactly what the terrorists want. More than that, just as one thought that the tide of public opinion was turning starkly against the Taliban and their violent tactics, it seems the terrorists may have hit a winning formula: Once they start targeting Ahmadis, too many ‘good’ Pakistanis seem willing to either remain just silent, or turn the conversations into a theological debate about who is and is not a ‘real’ Muslim, instead of focusing on the brutality and inhumanity of these terrorists killing Pakistanis. The rest of the world has, of course, never shown interest in Pakistanis being targeted by these terrorists as long as it kept them off their backs; now, it seems that ‘good’ Pakistanis will also look the the other way as long as it is Ahmadis who are targeted!
You know what this makes these ‘good’ Pakistanis who choose to remain either silent or look the other way or try to change the topic by camouflaging it in vague religosity? Bad Pakistanis.
I invite readers to read Bilal Qureshi’s post in Pak tea house
http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/pakist an-living-in-denial/#comment-33400
Wali Mian Sheikh Peer ka drama “Maarchand aaf Venice” mein Shah Laak jo kay Ahmedi Musalmaan hai. ye jumlay kahata hai, zara goor farmaeen:
“I am a Ahmedi Muslim. Hath not a Ahmedi eyes? hath not a Ahmedi hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Sunni Muslim is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?”
http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/merch ant/13/
Just think if Christians had not provided full citizenship to Wali Mian Sheikh Peer who was bonafide Sunni Rasiq ul-Aqeeda Muslim just like you and me, would we be reading his great plays.
Now for a second, just think if the priviliges that we enjoy here in United States of America were ceased from us for whatever reason, where would we end up?
We need to start putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes to feel and understand.
Another powerful post. I am glad people are speaking out because we really need to. Enough of this hiding behind ‘maslehat’. Injustice is wrong, and it is even more wrong when done in the name of religion.
“You know what this makes these ‘good’ Pakistanis who choose to remain either silent or look the other way or try to change the topic by camouflaging it in vague religosity? Bad Pakistanis.”
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the post or the above statement. If the slaughtered were Shias or Christians [and there have been plenty of both] or Hindus , I know Adil would have written the same line – for that is what the ground reality is in Pakistan. I guess the question really is about the difference in the silence of a learned few on ATP and that of Jamaat-e-Islami or Jamiat-e-Ulmaae Islam and others like them and their millions of followers. Faiz who is often discussed here did cry “bol key lab azaad hein teray” [speak up while your lips are free]. Now should the truth be held back because a few would fiercely bring in theology and try to hijack the issue. Perhaps ATP should stop discussing the persecution of minorities and anything related to the minorities because Adil Najam with his style of writing in that case would be creating perfects trolls. And that he must not do. Waah. People should talk to their friends in Pakistan belonging to the minorities and hear what fear they have while going to the Imam Bargahs and masjids and temples and churches these days. May be after that people would take the above post as a euphemism rather than a bait for mindless debates.
Jinnah’s Pakistan is often discussed on this blog. His key speeches are often quoted on this blog. He was a secular man and had a secular vision for this country regardless of how people may interpret history. At this point with Jinnah long gone there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind that with so many sects and minorities, further degradation is imminent if Pakistan is not turned into a secular state. How big an irony is that people cannot have eid on one day. Start with the constitution and take religion out of it. A bright Pakistani hindu child has a right to become the president of the country if he could and his faith should not be to his detriment. Do you ever notice how sometimes Hindus and Christians in Pakistan name their children with full muslim names and it is not by accident. This is a commentary on the state of minorities in Pakistan. Pakistan will not progress without breaking this bottleneck. Today Pakistan needs a Kamal Ataturk and “lest (more) innocent blood be shed” Pakistan needs the same chemotherapy that Turkey had before being reborn. The army, PPP and the Sharif brothers will have to accept this bitter fact. I know ANP and MQM will be all for it.
@ watin aziz
i beg to differ. thinking that the topic on the sad event of ahmedi muslim’s mosque would not change in a theological debate was rather naive. I don’t know what made you think that an event whose very basis is a state-sponsored theological terrorism should have just assumed the form of personal condolences.
I also do not understand how your silence on such issues is any way better than people who had taken time out to at least condemn those web-terrorists who had the audacity to undermine the loss of human life in that incident by spreading their message of hate.
it is also beyond me how people who had the courage to meet head on with the message of web terrorists like adnan siddiquie deserve to be called ignorants by someone like you who sits there and judges without even caring to say something wise from his or her intellectual depths.
i agree fighting back with these trolls is of no use. but sometimes enough is enough. It is our moral duty as a human being to sometimes take notice and uncover the agenda of these web terrorists who spread their message of hate. Like it is not enough to see our TV anchors call these hate mongers “mullan sahib” and “Ch sahib” on TV all the freaking time. This hypocrisy stinks. How do you know, whether some get influenced by these hate mongers or not and how fighting these hate-messages back in letters does not force many to start questioning the message of hate.
Also, at least for me observing that many at this site voice a moderate and secular (for lack of better term) is heartening and a silent but evolving fight. It should be applauded and encouraged.
We need to let the moderate opinion evolve and spread in whatever form it is taking whether it is up to your taste or not. your calling such efforts Jahil is nothing other than the jahalat of its own type.
You better be doing some real solid walk somewhere if you are so proud of your zero talk. I hope you are burning some real candles in the dark somewhere, if you think you have the right to call everyone else jahil without respecting that some people might actually get very upset by listening to apologies of terrorists for perpetrators of human atrocities in the name of religious dogmas.