PARACHINAR, Pakistan: Roadside bombs struck two vehicles in Pakistan’s volatile northwest Sunday, killing a former provincial irrigation minister and three others in one attack and two anti-Taleban tribal elders in the other.
The bomb that killed the former minister, targeted the vehicle he was traveling in at Bagto village, about 10 km from the town of Hangu. Former Irrigation Minister Ghaniur Rehman, his guard, the driver and a friend were killed, said Hangu police chief Abdur Rasheed. Two police officers accompanying the former minister were wounded in the attack.
A former mayor of Hangu, Ghaniur Rehman was a member of the Pakistan People’s Party. He spent time in jail under the previous military regime and was one of the beneficiaries of an amnesty — scrapped by the Supreme Court last month — that protected 8,000 politicians, businessmen and officials from corruption charges.
His son, a member of the North West Frontier Province legislature, blamed the Taleban and other extremists for his father’s assassination. “My father was targeted twice before. Taleban and militant groups are involved in this attack,” Ateequr Rehman said.
Several hours before this attack, another bomb struck a vehicle carrying anti-Taleban elders in the Bajaur tribal area, killing two and critically wounding four, said local official Naseeb Shah. The six men were working to set up an anti-Taleban militia in Bajaur, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border, said Shah.
The men were on their way to meet local officials in the main town of Khar when the remote-controlled device detonated, Shah said. The blast occurred near Kassai, about 28 km northeast of Khar.
Meanwhile, US missiles flattened an extremist hide-out in the country’s tribal belt Sunday, killing five militants in the latest strike in a recent spike in drone attacks.
The attack targeted a house in Mosakki village, about 25 km east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, and was the third suspected US missile attack in the tribal district in less than a week. “There may have been an important figure hiding in the house,” a Pakistani security official in Miranshah told AFP on condition of anonymity.
