QUETTA: Heavily armed militants who stormed a police training college near Quetta tricked cadets hiding in their rooms into opening locked doors by pretending to be soldiers, witnesses said on Tuesday as chilling accounts emerged from survivors.

Sixty-four people were killed after three gunmen wearing explosive vests burst into the sprawling academy, targeting sleeping quarters for some 700 recruits in the deadliest attack on a security ins­tallation in the country’s history.

Young cadets who fled the gun and suicide bomb assault told of their terror as citizens from Quetta, around 20km from Police Training College where the violence unfol­ded, meanwhile rushed to donate blood.

Speaking from his hospital bed where he was recovering from a bullet wound to his left shoulder, cadet Hikmatullah told AFP: “They entered the rooms one by one. They went in one room and fired inside it, then they went in another.”

The 22-year-old man said: “They also knocked at the locked rooms and told the cadets that they were from the army, and when they opened the doors, they fired at them. They came in by jumping over the walls of the academy which are very small. I ran away from my room and was hit by a bullet, I still managed to flee.”

Pakistan has again been forced to come to terms with another devastating attack at the hands of militants even as security overall has improved in recent years.

Witnesses recounted the attackers were dressed in camouflage and covered their faces, but could not say for certain whether they had disguised themselves in military uniforms.

Zubair Ahmed, another recruit, said: “We were sitting in a group of three or four people relaxing at around 10:15pm in the night and thinking of going to bed.

“Suddenly there was firing and people started running around, screaming, there was chaos. Some people were jumping out of windows, others were trying to climb out onto trees.

“I also jumped out of a window via a tree and injured my shoulder and foot. I lay on the ground injured for one hour till I was rescued.” The compound remained sealed to journalists but mobile video footage shot by an intelligence official showed the hollowed remains of a large dormitory hall covered in thick black soot.

All the bedding and belongings in the room had apparently burnt and been reduced to ashes, while a deep crater in the floor showed where one of the three attackers had detonated his suicide vest.

The attack was the third biggest in the country this year and a grim reminder that for all its gains in its long battle against terrorism, militants are still able to strike serious blows against state institutions.

“So many young men, light of their parents’ eyes, hope for old age and future, snuffed out in the prime of their lives #Quetta #RIP”, tweeted writer Beena Sarwar, while others turned their ire on the government for failing to do enough to crackdown on Islamist ideology.

“The ideological brothers of the Quetta attackers run Islamabad’s Red Mosque & had tea with the interior minister last week,” said analyst Mosharraf Zaidi — referencing Pakistan’s lack of action against extremist groups.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2016