ISLAMABAD: A suicide bomber in a vehicle blew himself up at a volleyball game in northwest Pakistan on Friday and a television station said 75 people were killed. Another report put the toll at 70.
The station, Express 24/7, said 65 people were wounded and more than 20 houses destroyed. The attack took place in a village that opposes Al-Qaeda-backed Taleban insurgents, officials said.
They said the bomber struck as young men played volleyball in front of a crowd of spectators, including elderly residents and children, near the town of Lakki Marwat.
Local police chief Ayub Khan said the bomber blew himself up in a SUV in the middle of the field and there was believed to be a second vehicle which fled the scene. “One was blown up here while the second fled to an unknown location. We believe it may be used to attack some other place,” he told Reuters by telephone.
“The villagers were watching the match between the two teams when the bomber rashly drove his double-cabin pickup vehicle into them and blew it up,” Ayub Khan told AFP.
“At least 75 people have died and the toll is likely to rise,” he added, estimating the crowd at the game to number about 200.
He said the blast was in retaliation for locals’ attempts to expel militants by setting up their own militia.
One of his deputies, Habibullah Khan, said that 50 people were also wounded.
Ramzan Bittani, a 33-year-old driver, told AFP by telephone from a local hospital that he had left the match to take a call. “As I was listening, I saw a huge blue and white spark followed by an ear-piercing blast. When I was able to figure out what had happened, I saw bodies and smoke all around. My hand was fractured,” he said.
Anwer Khan, 18, a student, said that he had just stepped out of his house and he saw a black pickup speeding toward the spectators.
“A giant flame leaped toward the sky. There was bright light everywhere, just like a flash, and then a very huge blast shook everything. Two pellets hit my forehead and blood started flowing,” Khan said.
He said that women and children were pulled from the rubble of a nearby house that collapsed in the blast, and said that the remote area was struggling to cope with the scale of the attack.
An attack on a sporting event is highly unusual, although militants have started bombing crowded areas such as markets to inflict mass killings and spread fear and chaos. Officials said people in the village had formed an armed anti-Taleban militia, a phenomenon that started in Pakistan last year. Despite major military offensives against their strongholds along the Afghan border, the Taleban have killed hundreds of people in bombings since October, challenging President Asif Ali Zardari, who already faces political heat because corruption charges against his aides could be revived. Since the army launched a ground offensive in South Waziristan in October, a slew of bombings have plagued Pakistan and killed more than 500 people.
Khalid Israr, a senior regional official who spoke by telephone from a hospital treating blast victims, said people recalled seeing the bomber drive a vehicle on to the playing field just before the explosion.
Security has plummeted over the last two-and-a-half years in Pakistan, where militant violence has killed more than 2,800 people since July 2007.
The northwest has suffered the brunt of the militant campaign, with suicide bombings increasingly targeting civilians.
Washington, however, is urging Pakistan to do more to also stamp out Al-Qaeda sanctuaries and dismantle havens of militants who cross the border and attack US and NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The region saw a rise in US drone strikes last year after President Barack Obama took office and established Pakistan as a front line in the war on Al-Qaeda.
Foreign forces in Afghanistan also rely on Pakistan as a transport route for supplies, and on Friday gunmen ambushed two tankers traveling though the southwestern province of Balochistan headed to NATO troops.
Local police official Mohammad Ansar told AFP that one of the trucks was badly damaged by fire, but no one was killed in the attack.
