PESHAWAR, 18 November 2006 — A suicide bomber attacked a police patrol in Peshawar yesterday killing himself and leaving three cops seriously injured. The bomber struck at the Pishtakhara police post located near the Khyber tribal region.
Also in Khyber agency, six people were killed in clashes between tribesmen from two religious organizations late on Thursday. Authorities have deployed troops to prevent more bloodshed.
Armed clashes have been taking place in the area between members of the Lashkar-e-Islami and Tanzeem-e-Ansarul Islam since May. “The area is tense and more clashes are feared,” Ayub Afridi, a trader in Karkhano market told Arab News.
Extremist groups seeking to destabilize the government because of President Pervez Musharraf’s alliance with the United States in the war on terrorism are suspected of being behind a wave of attacks in the northwest of the country in recent weeks.
Later yesterday, a bomb planted in a rubbish bin exploded at bus station in the eastern city of Lahore wounding 14 people, police said. Some of the victims were in a van and some standing nearby.
Lahore police said two people had been killed but the city’s police chief, Khawaja Khalid Farooq, later said his men had been mistaken and there were no fatalities in the blast.
There was no claim of responsibility for either of the explosions.
Pakistani security forces inflamed anger among pro-Taleban militant tribesmen in the northwest, in areas bordering Afghanistan, with an airstrike on a religious school at the end of October that killed about 80 suspected militants.
Police said the bomber killed in the Peshawar blast was a 20-year-old man who had been living in the city. His father came to the scene and identified the body, police said.
