RAWALPINDI: A suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted people queuing up outside a bank to draw salaries on Monday, killing 35, some of them pensioners. The United Nations meanwhile said spreading violence has forced it to start pulling out some expatriate staff and suspend long-term development work in areas along the Afghan border.
At a checkpoint in the Punjab capital of Lahore later in the day, two men on a motorcycle blew themselves up when they were stopped by police. At least seven policemen were injured.
Over 300 people have been killed in attacks by militants over the past month. The violence has grown bloodier since the government launched an anti-Taleban offensive in mid-October.
The attack in Rawalpindi occurred as people waited outside the National Bank on a payday to collect salaries. The bank is close to the army’s headquarters, and a majority of the people waiting in line were from the military, said Mohammad Mushtaq, a soldier who was wounded.y
Militants raided the headquarters last month, triggering a 22-hour standoff that left 23 people dead.
President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and other top officials condemned Monday’s blast but vowed to continue the offensive in South Waziristan, an impoverished and underdeveloped tribal region next to Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda is believed to have hide-outs.
The government on Monday offered rewards worth $5 million for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of the country’s Taleban warlord Hakimullah Mehsud and 18 of his lieutenants.
“They are the killers of humanity. Help the government of Pakistan to annihilate them,” said a government advertisement in the press.
The worsening security situation saw the United Nations announce Monday it was pulling out international staff from northwest Pakistan, days after at least 118 people were slaughtered in a car bomb attack in Peshawar.
“They will be relocated immediately,” Ishrat Rizvi, a UN spokeswoman, said of the international workers in the area, unable to say immediately how many staff the decision affected.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon raised the security level to “phase four” in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which US officials say are hotbeds of militancy. “The decision has been taken bearing in mind the intense security situation in the region,” the statement said.
On Oct. 5, five UN World Food Program workers died when a suicide bomber walked into their office in Islamabad and blew himself up. The Taleban claimed responsibility.
— With input from agencies
