Pakistani Military Academy, Near Bin Laden Hide-Out, Is Hit By Rockets

Unidentified assailants rained rockets on Pakistan’s elite military academy on Friday morning, in an unusual burst of violence near the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in May. Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors Enlarge This Image Adnan Qureshi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Pakistani security officials searched a hilltop area overlooking Abbottabad on Friday. Nine rockets were fired from a 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 of Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national killed in an American drone 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. As well as being home to thousands of soldiers, Abbottabad is located between the turbulent border regions and the disputed territory of Kashmir, which has been a source of conflict between Pakistan and India for more than six decades. Since the 1990s Pakistani intelligence has quietly run training camps in the hills above Abbottabad for Islamist militants fighting in Indian-occupied Kashmir. The camps’ current status is unclear. Abbottabad is also close to the Swat Valley, where Pakistani soldiers conducted a major anti-Taliban operation in 2009. Swat-based militants could be behind Friday’s attack, a senior security source said. But the rocket attack also led to speculation about a possible link to Bin Laden. The missiles were fired from a position near a mosque just a half-mile from Bin Laden’s compound, said Mr. Umarzai, the division commissioner. Pakistan’s military has struggled to explain how the world’s most wanted man lived for months, perhaps years, in the shadow of its most prestigious academy. A government commission set up to investigate the circumstances around the American raid is to present its findings by the end of this month.