Pak militants tried to capture country's nuke facilities at least thrice: Report

Washington, Aug 11 (ANI): Home grown Pakistani militants attacked country's nuclear facilities at least three times over the last two years, according to a leading security expert.

The incidents include an attack on a nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, and a homicide bombing at the nuclear airbase at Kamra on December 10, 2007, as tracked by Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford in the UK.

Gregory also noted a much more considerable raid by the Pakistani Taliban on August 20, 2008, when homicide bombers blew up several entry points to a main armament complex at the country's main nuclear facility, the Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex, FOX News quoted a paper, as saying.

Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are secure and that there is no chance of their falling into the hands of extremists or terrorists.

But these homegrown attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken steps to safeguard its stockpile against potential strikes, Gregory writes in the July issue of West Point's Combating Terrorism Center Sentinel.

Gregory's paper, "The Terrorist Threat to Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons," argues that Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure is designed to ward off external attacks from countries like India and the Unites States, and asks whether the geographic location of Pakistan's principle nuclear weapons infrastructure which is mainly in areas dominated by al Qaeda and the Taliban, making it more vulnerable to internal attacks. (ANI)