Pakistani TV station attacked with explosives, one wounded

Attackers on a motorcycle lobbed grenades and opened fire at a Pakistani television station in the capital on Wednesday (January 13), wounding one person, the station said.

The attack on the ARY News Islamabad office was the second such assault on media premises in as many months by the militant group claiming a connection with Islamic State.

The assailants at ARY News’ Islamabad office dropped pamphlets linked to the Islamic State’s self-declared province of Khorasan in Afghanistan and Pakistan, ARY reported on its website.

A security guard said he fired at the drive-by attackers as they fled away after tossing in the grenade.

“At around 6.15 pm, two men on a motorbike came from that direction, and they braked near our vehicle parked here. As soon as they stopped, they took out a grenade, or whatever it was, pulled the pin and threw it inside.”

“As soon as I saw (the man) pulling out the pin, I got suspicious and I fired at him. They escaped from me because they were behind the cars,” security guard, Mohammad Ashraf, told reporters.

An editor hit by shrapnel in the head was hospitalized.

The pamphlets found at the attack site said that Islamic State claimed responsibility for attacking media that are “siding with the apostate army and government of Pakistan in their global crusade against Islam”.

“The government is saying that there is no Daesh footprint. This is what they threw here, and it says Islamic State (Daulat-e-Islamia) Khorasan.”

“This is a pamphlet thrown in by the Islamic State saying: ‘You are a party to the war against Daesh, against the Islamist elements in Pakistan, and you are siding with the West, with the Americans’. And this is the reason they are attacking this ARY office,” said Kashif Abbasi, a senior anchor at ARY.

Pakistan’s army is fighting a military campaign against Taliban and other militants in the country’s northwest near the Afghan border.

In the past year, several commanders of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban have sworn allegiance to Islamic State, though there is little public evidence so far of direct operational links with the Middle East-based militants’ leadership.

The extent of actual militant involvement in attacks can also be difficult to verify. Police say extortionists often use the names of feared groups to intimidate their victims.

In December, an attacker threw a hand grenade at the offices of Din News in the eastern city of Lahore, leaving behind similar leaflets at the site of the attack. Four people were injured, Pakistani media reported.