Pakistan airport cleared of militants

Twenty-eight people were killed as Pakistan's military fought an all-night battle with Taliban gunmen who besieged Karachi airport armed with rocket launchers and suicide vests, leaving a nascent peace process in tatters.

Ten militants were among the dead, officials said, as Pakistan's biggest city witnessed a return of the kind of spectacular offensive waged before by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.

The attack at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport began just before midnight Sunday and about dawn, the military said that all 10 attackers had been killed.

Some of the gunmen were dressed in army uniform, as authorities put their mangled bodies, assault rifles, grenades and rocket launchers on display for the press. At least three blew up their suicide vests, witnesses said, with a decapitated head on display.

But after authorities initially declared the airport cleared about dawn, an AFP reporter witnessed fresh gunfire break out inside the airport - where explosions and fires had erupted during the night - prompting security forces to relaunch the operation.

"The attack is over and we have cleared the area of all militants," a spokesman for the paramilitary Rangers, Sibtain Rizvi, told reporters later after nearly 12 hours of fighting in all.

The bodies of the 18 victims of the Taliban assault - including eight airport security guards and four workers from Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) - were taken to a Karachi hospital where another 26 wounded people were being treated, a hospital official said.

PIA spokesman Mashoor Tajwar said no airline passengers were caught up in the incident.

"None of the passengers were trapped in the building, we had diverted all the flights to Lahore and Nawabshah," he told AFP. Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority said normal flight operations would resume at Karachi on Monday afternoon.

The TTP said the brazen attack was in revenge for its late leader Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone strike in November.

TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid also dismissed the Pakistani government's recent offer of a new round of peace talks as a ruse, and promised more attacks to come.

"Pakistan used peace talks as a tool of war," he told AFP.

"We have yet to take revenge for the deaths of hundreds of innocent tribal women and children in Pakistani air strikes.

"It's just the beginning, we have taken revenge for one (Mehsud), we have to take revenge for hundreds."

Talks to end the TTP's bloody seven-year insurgency in Pakistan have been underway since February, after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to power last year, but little clear progress has resulted.

The assault will raise fresh concerns about Pakistan's shaky security situation, and questions about how militants were able to penetrate the airport, which serves one of the world's biggest cities.

Officials said the gunmen entered from two sides of the airport at about 11pm on Sunday - the terminal used for the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and an engineering section close to an old terminal that is no longer in use.

Taliban militants have carried out a series of similar raids since rising up against the Pakistani state in 2007.

In 2011, Taliban gunmen attacked the Mehran naval base, which lies close to the Karachi airport, destroying two US-made Orion aircraft and killing 10 personnel in a 17-hour siege.

The group also carried out a raid on Pakistan's military headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi in 2009, leaving 23 dead including 11 troops and three hostages.