ISLAMABAD, 2 November 2007 — A suicide bomber killed eight people yesterday when he crashed his motorcycle into a bus carrying air force employees in Sargodha, 200 km south of here. The dead were all air force employees and included officers.
Police found the bomber’s severed head while other pieces of his body were plastered to the exterior of the mangled bus at the site of the attack in Punjab province.
It was the second such blast this week in the country. A suicide attack near President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s army office in Rawalpindi on Tuesday killed seven people.
Security forces meanwhile killed as many as 70 militant fighters in the volatile northwest, an army spokesman said, hours after the Sargodha attack.
Terror attacks and clashes between militants and security forces have deepened the turmoil in Pakistan as it heads into elections. Officials have reported at least 180 killed, mostly militants, in the past week since at least 2,500 security forces were deployed to tackle the followers of Maulana Fazlullah in the Swat Valley.
In the latest fighting, militants attacked police posts before dawn, and security forces responded with fire from mortars, small arms and helicopter gunships.
“According to the information I have from police and Frontier Constabulary, between 60 and 70 miscreants were killed in Swat’s areas of Khawaza Khela today,” army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said.
Sirajuddin, a spokesman for Fazlullah, denied the death toll, saying only one or two militants had died. He claimed that 40 security forces had surrendered during fighting in Khawaza Khela. That claim was denied by the provincial government.
“Security forces should join us and should not kill their Muslim brothers and sisters just for money at the behest of their non-Muslim masters,” Sirajuddin said. “If they cannot join our ranks, we ask them to leave the (armed) services and go home.” Sirajuddin also said militants had captured two foreigners in the area, but could not confirm local news reports that they were journalists or give their nationalities. He said the two would be investigated to establish their identities, then presented before the media.
Arshad said he had no confirmation that any foreigners were missing in the area.
Pakistan is going through a period of intense uncertainty in the run-up to a vote due in January that is supposed to transform the country into a civilian-led democracy. “With reference to extremists and terrorists, it’s a bad situation,” said Javed Iqbal Cheema, head of the Interior Ministry’s Crisis Management Cell. “It’s a very serious threat to Pakistan’s internal security.”
— Additional input from agencies
