RAWALPINDI – Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif visited the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) located near Kharian and inaugurated state of the art features to upgrade its infrastructure aimed at accommodating foreign Armies and own LEAs’ growing demand for training with Pakistan Army.
The addition of new facilities has turned NCTC as the best counter-terrorism training facility amongst the contemporary Armies, an Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) press release said Friday.
The COAS was briefed by Lt. General Umar Farooq Durrani, Commander of the strike Corps about various aspects of NCTC and apprised that so far 231,000 troops of armed forces and 3,483 officers and personnel of Police and Civil Armed Forces have been trained there.
He said that besides imparting anti-terrorism training at the centre, five joint exercises have been conducted at NCTC with friendly countries including China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Srilanka, Maldives and Turkey.
Defence Attaches of various countries were also present at the occasions.
The COAS appreciated all those responsible for imparting training at NCTC with a focused approach in enhancing capacity building of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) through quality training making the best use of the fully equipped facility.
General Raheel Sharif said that Pakistan has been a victim of terrorism for over a decade and sacrificed a lot but “We have turned the tide against terrorism primarily due to resilience displayed by the whole Nation and professionalism of our security forces.”
The COAS while speaking to officers and men said: “Let there be no doubt that our valiant armed forces have the capability to counter complete threat spectrum and with the backing of entire nation we will defend each and every inch of our beloved country, no matter what the cost.” –APP
