10 July 2004	Saturday	21 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

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KOHAT, July 9: Terrorists fired three rockets at the Pakistan Air Force base here on Thursday night, damaging a building, officials said on Friday.

The first rocket hit the Signals training battalion building at 9.53pm, the second one landed near the boundary wall of the base at 10.05pm and the third landed inside it.

However, a press release said two rockets were fired at the base and no causalities had been reported. A military official said timer devices had been found in the Kohat Development Authority township. The terrorists had planted the rockets on Thursday evening, he said.

Military officials decided at a meeting to install cameras on the Hangu road to check suspicious vehicles and people coming from the tribal areas in view of increasing attacks in the area, it has been learnt.

The deputy inspector-general of police, Kohat region, Abdul Majeed Marwat, said a case had been registered at the cantonment police station under the Explosives Act and a team constituted to investigate the incident.

He said that military, police and tribal areas' authorities were in touch and a plan was under way to avoid such incidents in future by strengthening the intelligence network and increasing patrolling along the border with the tribal areas.

He said under the current circumstances Kohat had become vulnerable tosuch attacks because of its proximity to tribal area. He said terrorists used Russian-made 107mm rockets in the attack, which were widely available in the tribal belt. The range of the rockets is 10km.

Darra Adam Khel Deputy Administrator Zahir Shah, when contacted, said some people in Sheikhan village between Kohat district and Darra Adam Khel had told him that they had heard loud bangs at the time of the attack.

He said his staff present on the border between Kohat and the tribalarea at the time of the incident did not hear any sound and he thought the rockets had been fired from inside Kohat.

On Jan 30 police and military authorities foiled an attempt to attack the PAF base by defusing three long-range missiles fitted with timers. Three days earlier three rockets had hit an orchard near the base. The rockets had been fired from the mountains of Shahpur village west of the base.

The air base was used by the United States for two years and there allegedly exists a Federal Bureau of Investigation detention camp near it. Last month military authorities had closed the cantonment area for general public following a reported threat from a terrorist group to kill high officials.