ISLAMABAD, 28 July 2004 — Two bomb explosions hit a newly established radio transmission tower late Monday in the South Waziristan region near the Afghan border disrupting broadcast to the area eyewitnesses said yesterday.
Nearby resident Allah Noor Wazir said the devices planted beneath a transmitting booster went off minutes after each other and destroyed the booster.
The radio station situated in Wana, the region’s administrative headquarters, had started its daily six-hour transmission a week earlier, covering an area with a radius of about 30 kilometers. The state-run Pashto language radio station began broadcasting as part of a government campaign to win over disaffected Pashtun tribals in area.
Its broadcast included music, religious and informative programs in local Pushto language. The government was also using the medium to propagate its development programs in the rugged mountainous area.
After the saboteurs struck, they exchanged small arms fire with security forces. “Part of the base of the tower has been badly damaged,” one Wana resident said. “The tower is not standing straight now. It is leaning on one side.”
Officials suspect foreign and local Al-Qaeda militants in the bombing, as the army and paramilitary troops have begun to crack down on them in the area. On Sunday, the government decided to close Afghan refugee camps in South and North Waziristan tribal regions by Sept. 1 to separate them from the suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists holed up in the area.
The government believes an unspecified number of foreign Al-Qaeda militants are hiding in the region, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify them from the thousands of Afghan refugees living there.
The majority of the Afghan refugees in the area have been living there since Soviet troops invaded their country in late 1979.
