The Pakistani city of Lahore, once synonymous with culture and cricket, was reeling from another terrorist outrage last night after a dozen gunmen stormed a police academy and killed at least 13 people in an eight-hour shootout with security forces.

Four of the militants blew themselves up, but others were captured alive after their brazen commando-style attack, which bore many similarities to the one in Mumbai in November and another on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore this month.

Up to eight police officers were among the dead yesterday and at least 90 were wounded. Ten more who had been taken hostage were rescued by commandos, according to officials.

The fresh assault on Pakistan’s most cosmopolitan city graphically illustrated the scale of the threat posed by Islamic militants based near the Afghan border – and the inability of local security forces to protect even their own facilities.

The attack heightened fears of a breakdown of law and order in the nuclear-armed nation, just three days after President Obama unveiled a new US strategy towards the region.

“It is wrong to say that law and order has collapsed in Pakistan,” said Rehman Malik, the Interior Minister. “It is a planned, organised terrorist attack. This shows the extent to which the enemies of our country can go.”

Mr Malik added that the gunmen were believed to be fighters loyal to the Pakistani Taleban commander Baitullah Mehsud. The Pakistani Taleban said a little-known group called Fedayin al-Islam was responsible.

The Mumbai attack has been blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Lahore attack on Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, both Pakistani militant groups. Pakistani security officials say that these and other militant groups have forged close ties with al-Qaeda in recent years, while expanding their influence in the eastern province of Punjab, of which Lahore is the capital.

About ten or twelve militants, some of them in police uniforms, attacked the Manawan police academy on the outskirts of Lahore at 7.20am, as 850 unarmed cadets were practising their drills outside.They appeared to be well trained, armed with rifles, grenades and rocket launchers, and carrying backpacks full of ammunition, weapons and supplies – as was the case in the attacks on Mumbai and the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore. Amjad Ahmad, a local police official, said that the attackers began by killing the security guards at the rear entrance of the police academy, which is just a few miles from the main border crossing between India and Pakistan. Witnesses said that the militants split up and headed for the parade ground, attacking the recruits from four sides as they did their drills.

One recruit, recovering in hospital, said: “First a hand grenade came over the wall. Then seven to eight attackers came inside and started firing indiscriminately. They fired at anything which moved. I kept crawling and a rescue vehicle took me away.”

Pakistani television showed images of about 12 people in police uniform lying on a parade ground, some apparently dead, while others were trying to crawl to cover.

Soldiers and paramilitary police soon surrounded the compound, some taking up positions on nearby rooftops while others entered in armoured vehicles, and helicopters hovered overhead. At one stage at least three explosions were heard from inside, followed by a flash of light and intense gunfire.

Major-General Shafqaat Ali said that commandos launched an operation to retake the compound just before 4pm. They finally cornered the last of the gunmen on the top floor of a building, where they were holding the hostages, according to Rao Iftikhar, a Punjab government official.

Television pictures showed troops on a rooftop of the main building cheering and firing into the air after at least three men were seen putting up their hands and surrendering to them.

Another gunman, identified as Hazrat Gull, was seized by security forces as he tried to flee by scaling a wall. Police said that he came from the town of Miran Shah in South Waziristan, one of the lawless northern tribal areas considered the centre of al-Qaeda and Taleban activities.

Pakistan has endured scores of suicide bombings in recent years, but the two recent attacks on Lahore suggest that militants are adopting new tactics by engaging in daring gunbattles in the country’s main urban centres.

Intelligence sources said that southern Punjab had become the main recruiting centre for militant groups with links to Pakistan’s intelligence service that continued to operate despite being outlawed.

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