U.S. & World

ISLAMABAD (CBS News) ― Pakistan's army says militants who infiltrated its headquarters compound are holding hostages inside.

The militants slipped into the complex after they and others attacked it, sparking a gunbattle that killed four assailants and six soldiers.

Officials previously said two militants were inside, but the army is now saying there are more than two.

A statement said the militants on Saturday were surrounded by security forces.

At least 10 people were dead, including four militants, after a brazen terrorist attack targeting the Pakistan military's heavily-fortified headquarters in Rawalpindi, a sprawling city which adjoins the capital Islamabad.

Authorities said two senior officers and four other soldiers were killed.

The attack Saturday began shortly before noon when the gunmen, dressed in camouflage military uniforms, drove in a white van up to the army compound and tried to force their way inside, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said.

The assailants shot at the guards at one checkpoint, killing some of them, and then jumped out of the van and ran toward a second checkpoint, he said. Abbas said the guards were likely confused by the attackers' uniforms.

The heavily-armed attackers then took up positions throughout the area, hurling at least one grenade and firing sporadically at security forces, said a senior military official inside the compound. The official, who said top army officials were trapped in the compound during the assault, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

After a 45-minute gunfight, four of the attackers were killed, said Abbas, who told the private Geo news television channel the assault was over and the situation was "under full control."

But more than an hour later, gunshots rang out from the compound, and Abbas confirmed that two more gunmen had eluded security forces and slipped into the headquarters compound in Rawalpindi. The city, adjacent to the capital of Islamabad, is filled with security checkpoints and police roadblocks.

On Saturday evening, Abbas said the two men remained holed up in a room near the checkpoint and were surrounded.

"We are trying to finish it at earliest, clear the area of terrorists and restore complete control," he told Dunya TV.

Abbas said six troops were killed and five wounded, one critically. Those killed including a brigadier and a lieutenant colonel, according to a military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Khan Bahadur, a shuttle van driver, was standing outside the gate of the compound when the white van pulled up, and shooting erupted.

"There was fierce firing, and then there was a blast. Soldiers were running here and there," he said. "The firing continued for about a half-hour. There was smoke everywhere. Then there was a break, and then firing again."

The audacious assault was the third major militant attack in Pakistan in a week and came as the government said it was planning an imminent offensive against Islamist militants in their strongholds in the rugged mountains along the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistani media said the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the ongoing assaults strengthened the government's resolve to launch the offensive.

"We have been left no other option except to go ahead to face them," he told Dawn television.

The attack came a day after a brazen Taliban suicide attack in Peshawar, the northern frontier city close to the Afghan border, in which at least 50 people were killed and another 100 people were injured.

The attack on Saturday, however, prompted deep anxiety over Taliban militants becoming emboldened by targeting heavily-protected locations, such as the military's main headquarters, while also demonstrating increased sophistication.

The use of military uniforms by the attackers "suggest they are now planning and organizing themselves much more than in the past," a senior Pakistani government official told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari on condition of anonymity. "This is far from an unruly bunch we are dealing with."

Earlier this week, a Taliban militant dressed as a paramilitary soldier walked inside the Islamabad office of the United Nations World Food Program and blew himself up. These two attacks have raised the prospect of militants dressing up as security personnel to access supposedly well-protected locations.

After the Peshawar attack on Friday night, Pakistani security officials warned they expected more suicide attacks by the Taliban in the coming days.

"More attacks could be a retaliation for a likely full-scale military attack on Waziristan," a security official speaking from Peshawar told CBS News on condition of anonymity.

Western diplomats in Islamabad, responding to Saturday's attack, warned that the incident demonstrated a growing Taliban determination to step up violence across the country, amid reports of the military preparing to attack their key locations in Waziristan.

In the past week, fighter jets of Pakistan's air force have attacked suspected Taliban sites in Waziristan, in a campaign described by defense officials as an effort to soften targets ahead of a ground campaign. Waziristan has for years been a place of refuge for militants tied to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

This summer, Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban movement, was killed in a missile attack thought to have been carried out by unmanned drone operated by the United States. Mehsud's killing has apparently weakened the Taliban's unquestioned unity and may have played a role in the military's decision to attack the region, Western diplomats added.

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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