Suicide attack in NW Pakistan kills 17 people
An injured receives treatment at a hospital in Dera Ismail Khan on Monday. (EPA)
Published: Sep 6, 2010 12:50 Updated: Sep 7, 2010 00:22
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A Taleban suicide bomber detonated a car in an alley behind a police station in a strategically important town in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 17 police and civilians in an explosion that shattered the station and neighboring homes.
About 40 people were wounded in the attack in Lakki Marwat, which sits on the main road between Punjab province, Pakistan's largest and most prosperous, and the North and South Waziristan tribal regions. A Pakistani army offensive pushed many militants out of South Waziristan in October. The militants still control much of North Waziristan, where US drone aircraft have been conducting a campaign of targeted killings.
Rescue workers and police officials were digging through rubble at the station in the town of Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police official Ghulam Mohammad Khan said. Nine police officers, four adult civilians and four children going to school were slain in the attack.
Police official Liaquat Ali said 45 police were in the building when the bomber struck.
Local TV footage showed emergency workers using heavy machinery to move the rubble of the mostly destroyed police station. Books and a schoolbag could be seen in the wreckage and the twisted frames of a motorcycle and a car sat nearby. A neighborhood shop and mosque also were partly destroyed.
The Pakistani Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they targeted the police for encouraging residents to set up militias to fight the militants — known locally as lashkars. The group pledged to carry out additional attacks unless the militias disbanded.
"After the police, we will attack those active in forming anti-Taleban lashkars if they have not given up their activities," Taleban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.
The police chief of Lakki Marwat district was killed in a suicide bombing several months ago and militants have carried out a string of attacks in the area since then.
In recent days, militants have launched attacks across the nation aimed at destabilizing the country and weakening a civilian government already struggling with a massive flooding that has displaced millions and caused widespread destruction.
The deadliest have targeted minority Shiite Muslims. A suicide bombing killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in the southwestern city of Quetta on Friday.
Two days earlier, a triple suicide attack killed 35 people at a Shiite ceremony in the eastern city of Lahore.
Both were claimed by the Pakistani Taleban, whose commander Qari Hussain Mehsud threatened Friday that his group would wage imminent attacks in the US and Europe.
On the same day, Pakistani intelligence officials said two suspected US missile strikes had killed at least seven people in North Waziristan, which is largely controlled by the Haqqani network, one of the main groups battling Americans in neighboring Afghanistan.
Comments
ADNAN
Sep 7, 2010 00:38
Report abuseGEORGE
Sep 8, 2010 01:45
Report abuseALAWI FRANCIS
Sep 8, 2010 20:29
Report abuseYour suggestion that he should kill people (politicians) means you want to be a partner in his wickedness.
Terrorism does not benefit the people of Pakistan in anyway whatsoever. Be careful how you express yourself. We all have to give an account when we stand before GOD. In fact moment by moment we are being judged by God, but the sentence is carried out to conclusion on the Last Day. We are continuously receiving the blessings or curse of God during our lives, though we do not sense it.
Maybe I do not have any understanding, so please show all of us, some benefit that came to the people of Pakistan, who are already going through so much of suffering, from this bomber's terrorist action.
NILOFER
Sep 9, 2010 01:02
Report abuseGEORGE
Sep 10, 2010 17:50
Report abuse