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Pakistan Suicide Attack Kills 19, Wounds 54
A jacket wallah attacked a market in a largely Shiite Moslem area of northwest Pakistain on Friday, killing at least 19 people and wounding 54 others in the deadliest attack for a month.The bomb went kaboom!near a mosque as the main Friday prayers took place in Parachinar, a flashpoint for sectarian violence between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Moslems in Pakistain's tribal badlands on the Afghan border. Parachinar is the main town in Kurram district, part of the semi-autonomous tribal belt where U.S. drone strikes target Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked faceless myrmidons in what Washington considers the world's largest international terror hub. It was the deadliest attack in Pakistain since a remote-controlled kaboom killed at least 35 people in the Khyber tribal  district on January 10."At least 19 people were killed and 54 others were maimed when a suicide bomber on a cycle of violence went kaboom!" in a crowded market," top regional administrator Sahibzada Mohammad Anees told Agence La Belle France Presse. Fourteen of the maimed were in a critical condition, he added, fuelling fears that the corpse count could rise further. A splinter group that broke away from Pakistain's umbrella Taliban faction grabbed credit for the attack. "We sent the suicide bomber following attacks on Sunni Moslems by the Shiite tribes in the area," Fazal Saeed told AFP by telephone, claiming to be the leader of the so-called Tehrik-e-Taliban Islami. "We caught a man yesterday who was planting a bomb at a petrol station owned by a Sunni. We did it in response," he added. Since the late 1980s more than 4,000 people have been killed in outbreaks of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite jihad boy groups in Pakistain. Residents said the bombing destroyed at least eight shops in the city's crowded bazaar. Telephone links broke down after the attack and news of the elevated corpse count was slow to arrive via radio, Anees said. Officials had earlier said eight people died in the blast, which struck as locals visited a special Friday market. "A curfew has been imposed in the area after some people tried to hold a demonstration. Security forces have sealed the area," Anees said. According to an AFP tally, Islamist bombers and gunnies have killed more than 4,800 people across Pakistain since July 2007. Posted by: trailing wife 2012-02-18 |
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