PESHAWAR: Militants in Pakistan on Sunday stormed the homes of two anti-Taleban elders, killing one of them, police said, as the death toll from a bomb in Peshawar rose to 15.
The northwestern capital on the fringes of a lawless tribal belt has been hit by four suicide bombings in a week, as the military presses on with a major offensive against Taleban fighters in nearby mountain strongholds.
In Saturday’s attack in Peshawar, a man detonated a cache of explosives as police tried to stop and search his car at a checkpoint. Local officials said four people including a child died overnight, taking the death toll to 15.
Violence continued to plague the area on Sunday, when about 50 militants with the banned Lashkar-e-Islam extremist group set upon the home of Fahimuddin, a local mayor who had raised a militia to fight the Taleban. Fahimuddin told AFP that some of his would-be assassins were disguised in the all-enveloping burqa worn by Muslim women when they approached his home in Bazid Khel village on Peshawar’s outskirts.
“There were around 50 attackers. Three of them wearing burqas managed to reach near my house. My men stopped them and asked for identification but they started firing after flinging off the burqas,” said Fahimuddin. “It is 100 percent sure that these people came to kill me. They left behind grenades and Kalashnikovs,” he said.
Karim Khan, a police official in Peshawar, confirmed the attack and said three militants were killed in the clash with Fahimuddin’s militia. The rest of the insurgents fled the scene. Lashkar-e-Islam, which has loose ties to the feared Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP) movement, punishes people accused of prostitution, gambling and other vices.
Later Sunday in the nearby district of Bajaur, dozens of Taleban rebels raided the home of pro-government tribal elder Malik Sher Zaman — who had also formed a militia — killing him at his residence in Mamond town. “He was shot dead and his house was blown up by the Taleban,” said Adalat Khan, the local administrative official. Zaman’s wife and child were in the house but managed to escape. “The Taleban also fired 30 rockets at various locations (in Bajaur),” Khan said, adding that there were no casualties in those attacks.
The TTP have claimed responsibility for Saturday’s bombing and a brazen attack on the Peshawar headquarters of the nation’s top intelligence agency, the ISI, on Friday that killed 17 people.
The military said Sunday that five militants had been killed in South Waziristan in the last 24 hours.
