Gunmen attack Pakistan air force base
Taliban militants attacked a Pakistani air force base near the northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, leaving at least six attackers dead and two soldiers wounded, the military said.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the assault, with TTP spokesman Muhammad Khurasani saying in an email: "Our suicidal unit carried out the attack."
Two soldiers, one of them an officer, were wounded in an exchange of fire with the militants at the Badaber base, 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Peshawar.
"As per initial information, seven to 10 terrorists tried to break deep in the base" but troops managed to contain them, military spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa said in a tweet.
He said operations were continuing to search for any remaining gunmen.
Troops "reacted quickly and effectively surrounded and confined the terrorists in a small area", Bajwa said.
He said quick response forces, army commandos and local PAF troops were involved in the operation.
"Police were present outside the base in an outer cordon," he added.
Peshawar, the gateway to the country's tribal badlands where the military has been carrying out a series of offensives against Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants, has suffered numerous Taliban assaults.
The city suffered the worst terror attack in Pakistani history in December when Taliban gunmen massacred more than 150 people at an army-run school, most of them children.
But since then there has been something of a lull in violence. The last major attack in the city came in February when three heavily armed Taliban militants stormed a Shiite mosque, killing 21 people.
A senior PAF official told AFP the base attacked on Friday was used as a residential camp for air force personnel.
"There are no air assets including combat aircraft deployed at the base," he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Pakistan has been waging a major offensive against insurgent hideouts in the tribal northwest for over a year in a bid to quell an Islamist insurgency that has raged for more than a decade.
Officials say nearly 3,000 militants have been killed since the launch of the latest offensive.