Pakistan refugee camp blast kills 15

JALOZAI, Pakistan: A car bomb tore through a Pakistani refugee camp yesterday, killing 15 people including women and children and heightening security fears before a May general election.
More than 40 other people were wounded when the bomb exploded at Jalozai, the country’s largest refugee camp, as scores of people queued for rations.
Jalozai is home to tens of thousands of people displaced from the tribal belt, a stronghold of Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants, on the Afghan border and is close to the main northwestern city of Peshawar. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
But officials linked the attack to fighting in Khyber district, where the military has stepped up an offensive against Taleban and local militia, and from where most camp residents have fled. “The bomb exploded in a car parked near the office where refugees had lined up to get rations and new arrivals were being registered,” said camp official Fuad Khan.
District police chief Mohammad Hussain said the bomb was detonated by a timer and carried up to 35 kilograms of explosives and mortar bombs.
Spilt grain and children’s food supplements littered the ground next to discarded toys, sandals and twisted metal. The engine of the car which exploded lay around 15 meters from a two-foot crater left by the blast.
Local administration official Ayaz Khan Mandokhel said 15 people were killed, including two children aged around eight and 10 and three women.
Rations were being handed out by a local charity BEST in partnership with the United Nations and the US Agency for International Development.
Mohammad Ashraf, project director at BEST, a UN partner, said a 30-year-old female member of staff who worked on hygiene was killed. Nine other members of staff who were distributing food were wounded, he said.
Aside from the election, the bombing will raise concerns about the safety of aid workers in the northwest, where seven charity staff were shot dead on Jan. 1 and where those working on polio eradication have also been targeted.
Most of those now in Jalozai, built originally to host Afghan refugees, come from Khyber, where the army is battling the Taleban in the Tirah valley to try to safeguard the election and crack down on militants behind attacks.
The May 11 vote will mark the first time that an elected civilian government hands over to another in a country that has seen three military coups and four military rulers since independence in 1947.