Pakistan naval base strike: Attackers' bodies finally buried

Nearly a year after the Taliban attack on a key Pakistani naval base, the bodies of four terrorists involved in the brazen strike to avenge Osama bin Laden's killing have been buried in unmarked graves here after intelligence agencies failed to establish their identity.

The dramatic terrorist siege of the PNS Mehran airbase in Karachi on May 22 last year lasted 16 hours. The terrorists killed 10 security personnel and destroyed two P3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft worth over $60 million.

The bodies of the terrorists, who either blew themselves up or were gunned down by security forces, had been kept at a morgue run by NGO Edhi Foundation and were eventually buried after intelligence surveillance work failed to establish the identity of the attackers, The Express Tribune reported today.

Authorities had hoped that relatives of the dead would come forward to claim the bodies but this did not happen.

"We finally got the go-ahead a few weeks ago and now they've been buried in one of our graveyards for the unknown," said Anwar Kazmi, a spokesman for the Edhi Foundation.

Several DNA samples were collected from the mutilated bodies but many tests produced no conclusive results about the identity of the dead men.

Sources close to the investigation told the newspaper that intelligence agencies had hoped that relatives of the dead would eventually come forward to claim the bodies.

"This has happened in the past and we were able to track down associates of terrorists when their families came forward to claim their dead," an unnamed intelligence official said.

The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for the attack on the naval airbase, saying it was meant to avenge the killing of bin Laden in a US raid in Abbottabad on May 2 last year.

A Taliban spokesman had said at the time that the attackers were helped by "local friends" in Karachi.