Two suspected militants and two policemen were killed on Tuesday in a five-hour shootout between security forces and rebels entrenched in a building in the southern port city of Karachi, officials said according to DPA. The exchange of fire started when a police party surrounded a house in the city's Landhi district to arrest suspected members of a banned terrorist organization. "The militants targeted the law enforcers with small arms, leaving two policemen, including a senior officer, dead and four more injured," said Akhtar Zamin, the caretaker interior minister of Sindh Province, where Karachi is located. After around five hours exchange of fire the security forces stormed the building but four terrorists managed to escape from the building, Deputy Inspector General Police Tariq Mughal told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephonic interview. They were chased by the police and another firefight broke that left two of them dead and two injured, who were arrested in critical condition. A hand grenade was recovered from one of them. A child was also wounded in the shootout. Initially, the police officials had claimed that five fighters and two policemen had died in the clashes. There were also reports that seven to eight militants had managed to flee. During the search of the house the police also recovered thousands of ball-bearings that are packed with the explosives in used in suicide vests.
