PESHAWAR: A huge car bomb killed a hundred people in Pakistan and Taleban gunmen struck a UN hostel in Afghanistan on Wednesday in a wave of bloodshed as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Islamabad.
The attacks hit the neighboring countries just days before President Barack Obama makes a key decision on whether or not to send thousands more troops into an increasingly deadly region.
The Peshawar attack struck just hours after she arrived in Islamabad, with the devastating blast trapping people under pulverized shops. Flames reached out of the burning wreckage as smoke billowed over severed body parts. Eyewitnesses tell of living hell. The explosion brought down buildings. Doctors at the Lady Reading Hospital said many of the casualties were women and children, as a routine day out in the city’s main bazaar ended in horror and eclipsed Clinton’s first visit as secretary of state to Pakistan.
“We have 92 dead bodies and 217 injured people. Nineteen of the dead are women and 11 are children. All the dead are civilians,” Dr. Zafar Iqbal said as staff declared an emergency and called for blood donations.
“It was a car bomb. Some people are still trapped,” bomb disposal official Shafqat Malik told reporters as the death toll rose into the early evening.
Appalled hospital staff gave harrowing accounts of the dead and wounded piling up in hospital corridors. “There are body parts. There are people. There are burned people. There are dead bodies. There are wounded,” said Dr. Muslim Khan.
In Kabul, Taleban suicide attackers stormed a guesthouse and killed 11 people, including six foreign UN staff,.
The two-hour attack, which began shortly before 6 a.m., sent people jumping out of windows or hopping from roof to roof to escape a fire that engulfed part of the three-story building. A man from Kansas City, Mo., said he held off gunmen with a Kalashnikov until a group of guests escaped through the laundry room.
Clinton, the most senior US official to visit since Obama put Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda and made the Afghan war a top priority, said that Washington stands “shoulder to shoulder” with Pakistan’s people.
Clinton vowed new investments while fending off fierce Pakistani criticism of US policies, including missile attacks on Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants based in Pakistan’s wild tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
“This is our struggle as well,” said Clinton, condemning the “tenacious and brutal extremist groups who kill innocent people and terrorize communities.” “We will give you the help that you need,” Clinton told a joint news conference with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who insisted the country was unswerving in its fight against those responsible. “People who are carrying out such heinous crimes want to shake our resolve. We will not buckle, we will fight you,” he added.
The United States, which is heavily committed in Afghanistan, relies on Pakistan for regional stability and to fight militants. But the fragility of the security situation in the region was revealed earlier in a brazen attack on a UN-approved guesthouse in Kabul, in what was the deadliest assault on the world body’s mission in Afghanistan since 2001.
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan ordered an urgent security upgrade for international organizations after the rampage, blamed by Afghan authorities on Pakistani Taleban dressed as policemen.
Witnesses said they sprayed guests with gunfire and detonated grenades before blowing themselves up. Two security personnel were killed and a charred unidentified body was found, as well as the six expatriate UN staff who died.
“This attack will not, I repeat, will not deter the UN from continuing all its work to reconstruct a war-torn country and to build a better future for all Afghans,” UN head of mission Kai Eide said.
Militants also fired rockets at the luxury Serena Hotel in Kabul, a favorite haunt of foreign workers, but no casualties were reported. The new bloodshed came with tensions rising in Afghanistan ahead of the scheduled presidential runoff on Nov. 7 between Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, following a fraud-tainted first round in August.
Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said the militia, driven from power in a US-led invasion eight years ago, claimed responsibility for the raid.
“This is the first step, as we have warned that we will disrupt the second round of the elections,” he told AFP by telephone.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was outraged at the “appalling” bombing and the loss of so many lives. He also condemned the Taleban assault in Kabul.
