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Female suicide bomber dressed to kill
 Security agencies warned on Friday that a female suicide bomber in fashionable clothes and sunglasses might target Pakistan Air Force (PAF) installations in Peshawar to avenge an airstrike on a madrassa in Bajaur last year. This suicide bomber will be different from others. This one will not have a beard ... it will be a good-looking girl with the aim to avenge the airstrike, official sources told Daily Times. The sources said that the would-be suicide bomber would target PAF-run schools and colleges to kill as many male and female students as possible, therefore security around all such buildings had been tightened. However, PAF spokesman Air Commodore Sarfraz Ahmed Khan brushed aside such rumours, describing the situation as absolutely normal. We got no special threat, he told Daily Times over the telephone from Islamabad. The PAF might have been selected as a potential target after suspected militants warned earlier that they would attack its facilities in the same manner that jets took off from Peshawar base to bomb the madrassa in Bajaur. Pakistan claimed its planes had carried out the airstrike on a terrorists training centre where militants were being trained for attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan. Some 83 people were killed in the October 30 raid. Tightened security around PAF-run schools was noticed, as barbed wire had been put up around walls of Fizaia Degree College. A female teacher at the college said, We have been told to look out for suspicious things. There is a security threat ... possibly a suicide bombing. Security had also been beefed up for all other important places in Peshawar, and all types of movement was being monitored by electronic cameras and policemen. We are on red alert, said NWFP Police chief Muhammad Sharif Virk, referring to suicide bombing as a new phenomenon. The best course of action against the threat was proactive intelligence, he told Daily Times. Two private educational institutions City School and BeaconHouse were shut down following threats of a suicide attack, NWFP Information Minister Asif Iqbal told Daily times. The government-run schools were not closed, but the two private educational institutions were closed because of rumours of a suicide attack, he added. A five-star hotel deployed special guards in and around its building, and people were being searched at two points before being allowed to move into the main lounge of the hotel. A senior police official said rumours of a suicide bombing were making people afraid, which was exactly what the militants wanted to achieve. Posted by: Fred 2007-02-24 |
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