PESHAWAR/ISLAMABAD, 13 July 2007 — A suicide car bomber killed five people including three police officers in northwest Pakistan yesterday, while three government workers died in another suicide attack near the Afghan border, officials said.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, they follow Taleban and Al-Qaeda calls for attacks to avenge the army raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque.
The car bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle after police had stopped him at a roadblock and asked him to get out, said Mohammed Iqbal, a local police official.
Several more people were injured in the attack near Mingora, the main town in the remote Swat Valley, 120 kilometers northeast of Peshawar, Iqbal said. The bomber was also killed.
In the second incident, three government employees died when a suicide bomber on foot blew himself up in the government headquarters in the North Waziristan region, two intelligence officials said.
The attacker struck after forcing his way into the building in the town of Miranshah, 180 kilometers southwest of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.
The man set off explosives strapped to his body in the office of the local administration chief when a junior worker stopped him from entering, killing the office worker and another person instantly and wounding three others.
One of the wounded men died later in hospital, officials said.
Extremists in both North Waziristan and Swat initiated a chorus of calls for attacks on security forces after President Gen. Pervez Musharraf ordered the army to besiege the radical Red Mosque in the capital.
Since then, more than a dozen attacks have killed at least 35 people, including 17 soldiers and police, across the northwest, where militants are gaining in strength and from where many of the students at the Red Mosque’s two madrasas hailed.
The army said on Monday that it had deployed extra troops to both North Waziristan and Swat because of deteriorating security.
Meanwhile, officials admit that the authority of the government in tribal areas and NWFP is gradually waning.
Sources told Arab News nearly 300 people lost their lives while 807 people sustained injuries in suicide attacks, bomb blasts and targeted killings during 2006 and 2007.
“The government is gradually losing its writ in the areas, lawlessness and terrorism are on the rise and morale of the law enforcing agencies is on the decline,” the sources quoted chief secretary of NWFP as saying in his briefing to the federal Cabinet recently.
The sources said activities of militants were growing amid increased financial and moral support by people.
In 2007, the number of bomb blasts at CD shops were 20, followed by 4 in girls collages and schools and 4 in barber shops while 21 threat letters were received by CD shop owners, nine by girl schools and collages and five by barber shops.
The sources said that Tehrik Nefaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi is also gaining ground in the region after Bajaur incident where several people died in attack on a madrasa.
