MIRANSHAH, 2 February 2007 — Three people were killed when unidentified assailants ambushed a jeep carrying government officials in the North Waziristan village of Mir Ali yesterday.
Inayatullah, an engineer, Hazrat Khan, a road inspector, and Nek Muhammad, a security guard were killed on the spot. They were carrying 800,000 rupees ($13,000) to be used for salaries in the nearby town of Mir Ali. The money was not stolen, an official at the Civil Works Department said, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. Three other security guards were injured in the shooting near Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, a government official said. A local intelligence official confirmed the details of the attack.
Four assailants, waiting in a car with tinted windows, sprayed the jeep with fire from assault rifles, killing the three men, the government official said.
The officials did not say who they suspected were responsible for the attack, but militants are active in the volatile region, near the Afghan border.
The attack could mark a further escalation in tensions in North Waziristan, where the government reached a peace deal with pro-Taleban militants in September, but is under growing international pressure to crack down on them because of cross-border insurgency into Afghanistan.
Last month, a suicide car bomber attacked a military convoy near Miranshah, killing four soldiers and a civilian.
That followed a threat from a local militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, of revenge attacks for a Pakistani military strike on an alleged Al-Qaeda training facility in neighboring South Waziristan where eight people were killed.
In another incident in Bara, two people, including a woman, were killed when an unknown attacker hurled a bomb on their house. Two children were injured in the attack. Assistant Political Agent of Khyber Agency Attaur Rehman told Arab News Laskar-e-Islami was suspected to be behind the bombing that killed Dua Khan and his wife.
Meanwhile, police released a sketch of a suicide bomber who blew himself up at an upscale hotel in Islamabad, as officials said yesterday there was no evidence that the Taleban orchestrated the attack.
One security guard died and seven other people were wounded when the attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body after guards stopped him at a side entrance to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last Friday.
Some Pakistani officials and commentators have suggested that Taleban-linked militants may have been behind that blast and two other suicide attacks on Saturday and Monday in the northwest of the country that killed another 17 people.
However, Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said yesterday that there was “no substance” to link the Taleban to any of the attacks, including the hotel blast.
“We still haven’t been able to determine as to who has done it, which group has done it,” he said. Several Pakistani newspapers published the sketch of the hotel bomber yesterday, showing a young, round-faced man with a thin moustache and beard. Officials said they produced the image using the bomber’s remains.
