Taliban kills foreign climbers
By Haq Nawaz Khan and Tim Craig,
Updated: Sunday, June 23, 2013


PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Gunmen stormed a camp on Pakistan’s second largest mountain on Sunday, killing nine foreign climbers in a brazen assault that could deal a blow to the country’s efforts to jumpstart its tourism industry.

Pakistan’s Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it retribution for a suspected U.S. drone strike last month that killed Wali ur-Rehman, the second highest-ranking leader of the terrorist group.

“Through this killing we gave a message to international community to ask U.S. to stop drone strikes,” said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Taliban spokesman.

The attack in northern Pakistan at Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth tallest mountain, occurred around 1 a.m. as the climbers and their guides were at a camp at about 4,000 feet above sea level. According to local and regional officials, about a dozen gunmen tied up the climbers’ Pakistani guides before shooting the climbers as they slept in tents.

The attackers reportedly wore police uniforms, an increasingly common tactic Taliban militants have used to evade scrutiny.

In all, 11 people were killed, including five from Ukraine, three from China and one from Russia, according to preliminary information from Pakistani authorities. Two Pakistanis were also reportedly killed. At least one Chinese tourist survived and was later rescued from the area, known as Ferry Meadows, officials said.

The assault occurred in the picturesque Gilgit Ballistan area, a popular tourist area in the Himalayan Mountains near the country’s border with China. Nanga Parbat rises to an elevation of 26,660 feet. The world’s second largest mountain, K2, with an elevation of 28,251, straddles Gilgit Ballistan's border with China.

The slayings come as Pakistan’s military and government have been trying to combat a wave of terrorist bombings and sectarian attacks, including some aimed at Shiites in the northern part of the country.

Attacks on foreigners have been rare and Sunday’s killings rattled Pakistan’s government.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan spent part of Sunday fielding calls from worried ambassadors, including Chinese envoy Xu Feihong.

“He asked whether Chinese tourists were the target and I said Pakistan was the target,” Ali Khan said. “The terrorists want to give message to the world that Pakistan is an insecure place and insecure country.”

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed to rebuild Pakistan’s economy. He said such acts of “cruelty and inhumanity” wouldn’t deter the state from efforts “to make Pakistan a safe place for tourists.”

But Syed Mehdi Shah, the chief minister in Gilgit-Baltistan, said he worries the incident would likely hurt the local economy, which relies heavily on the summer climbing season.

"It will have negative effects on tourism in the scenic northern areas, which is the sole source of revenue of the government as well [as] of the local population,” he said.

Shahjahan Khetran, managing director of Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, said the “government tries its best to provide security cover to tourists” in that area, including making hikers and climbers register their whereabouts.

But until now, Khetran notes the biggest threats for tourists in that remote area were not man-made.

“I personally see the involvement of some foreign hand, some foreign agency in this incident as local people could not think of carrying out such heinous crime,” Khetran said. “Some foreign element could have carried out this attack to destroy Pakistani tourism.”

For weeks, Pakistan’s Taliban has been vowing it would revenge the death of ur-Rehman, who was killed May 29 when a suspected CIA-manned drone fired two missiles into a house in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region.
U.S. officials have not confirmed they carried out that strike, but they had issued a $5 million reward for ur-Rehman’s capture after he was linked to a 2009 assault that killed seven Americans at a CIA-training facility in Afghanistan.

At the time, Pakistan’s Taliban in part blamed Pakistan’s government for not doing more to stop suspected U.S. drone strikes on Pakistani soil.
Khan reported from Peshawar. Craig reported from Kabul. Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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