Pakistan Navy Foils Terrorist Attack on Naval Base
Sep. 9, 2014 - 05:40PM | By USMAN ANSARI
AA Fishing boats are moored Sept. 9 near a naval dockyard in Pakistan's port city of Karachi. The Pakistan Navy confirmed it fended off a terrorist attack from the sea on Sept. 6 but said no group has yet claimed responsibility. (ASIF HASSAN / AFP)Filed Under.
ISLAMABAD — The Pakistan Navy last night revealed it had foiled a waterborne terrorist attack on a naval facility in Karachi on Sept. 6, killing two of the attackers and apprehending four more. However, a Navy petty officer was killed in the attack, and an officer and six sailors lightly wounded.
The attack on the Pakistan Navy Dockyard is the first time that a naval facility in Pakistan has been attacked by terrorists from the sea.
Though armed with grenades and assault rifles, they could have done considerable damage to any naval assets with the rocket-propelled grenades they were carrying if they had had the opportunity.
According to a Navy spokesman, the interrogation of the apprehended terrorists resulted in the apprehension of a number of accomplices elsewhere, which may explain the delay in reporting the attack.
The Navy would not comment on the identity of the attackers when contacted by Defense News, only saying that an investigation was still in progress.
There has not yet been a claim of responsibility.
Analyst Haris Khan of the Pakistan Military Consortium think tank said maritime and especially offshore facilities are difficult to protect, as can be seen with the tactics of environmental pressure groups like Greenpeace. Thus, “In essence, naval installation on sea shores are very hard to protect from attacks from the sea by non-state actors.”
Added to this, he said, the Navy has mainly concentrated on defending its facilities from conventional military attacks based on past experience.
“The Karachi naval dockyard was first targeted in December of 1971 by the Indian Navy when it towed Osa-class missile corvettes near the port and fired Styx anti-missiles at the assembled shipping and fuel storage facilities,” Khan said. "’Later, PN [the Navy] had installed a very elaborate plan to defend its only seaport using submarines, surface ships, aerial assets, and now have raised a special unit of the PN-Marines and PN-Special Service Group [SSG-N]. The PN also devised a comprehensive plan to move most of its submarines and surface vessels to Ormara, which is 250 kilometers west of Karachi and air assets to Turbat, which is approximately 300 kilometers west of Karachi.”
Khan said he wonders what route the terrorists took to the dockyard and where they began their attack from.
Analyst Brian Cloughley, a former Australian defense attache to Islamabad, said the Navy did well to fend off the attack that clearly had a good element of surprise.
“Certainly attacks are expected, given what has happened at various military bases over the past few years, but it’s simply not physically possible to guarantee 100 percent defense against penetration at such a vast complex as the dockyard,” he said. “The ready reaction force was on the spot very quickly indeed, and not only managed to thwart the attack but to capture some of the attackers, which I don’t think has happened before, and which will be most valuable in tracking down others.”
Cloughley said he thinks that fending off the attack, and its aftermath, will spur the military on against these terrorists.
“The death of the petty officer is much regretted and will make the services even more determined than ever to stamp out these criminals. But overall, the Navy is to be congratulated on the way it handled the affair,” he said.