ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Unidentified assailants rained rockets on Pakistan'selite military academy on Friday morning, in an unusual burst of violence near the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in May.
Nine rockets were fired froma hilltop overlooking Abbottabad, a garrison town 35 miles north of Islamabad, said Khalid Khan Umarzai, the commissioner of Abbottabad division.
Three rockets hit the wall of the Pakistan Military Academy, Pakistan's equivalent of West Point."Some exploded, some did not," Mr. Umarzai said."There was no loss of life."
No group claimed responsibility, and the military said it had dispatched investigators.
"I don't know who could be involved because I don't remember any previous incident like this" close to the academy, said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, an army spokesman.
Abbottabad gained global attention last May as the scene of the dramatic Navy Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and plunged American relations with Pakistan into turmoil.
The town is the birthplace ofAslam Awan, a Pakistani national killed in an Americandrone strike in North Waziristan on Jan. 10. American officials described Mr. Awan, who studied in Britain, as a senior external operations planner for Al Qaeda.
Additionally, Umar Patek, an Indonesian militant accused of involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, was arrested in Abbottabad by Pakistani authorities in January 2011. The United States government had offered a$1 million reward for Mr. Patek's capture.
But the town had otherwise escaped the militant bloodshed that has plagued Pakistan in recent years. It has suffered no suicide bombings and few shootings. |
