A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a security checkpost in North Waziristan on Friday, killing six people, officials said. The attack comes three days after a missile attack in Mir Ali town that killed top Al Qaeda commander Abu Laith Al-Libi. “It was a suicide attack on a security checkpost in which three tribal policemen and two paramilitary soldiers [died],” military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told Daily Times. Eight others were injured, he added.
19 ‘dead’: Local administration sources said 19 people including nine Frontier Corps soldiers died in the attack. They said a number of tribal policemen (Khasadars) and civilians were also killed. Security forces fired artillery shells at several hilltops after the attack, they added.
The targeted Kajhori checkpost is 30 kilometres east of Miranshah and 15 kilometres from the site of MondayÂ’s missile attack in Khushali village near Mir Ali. Neither Islamabad nor Washington owned the missile attack but residents of Mir Ali said unmanned US spy drones were seen before the incident.
The army spokesman said it was too early to suggest that the attack on Kajhori checkpost was a reaction to Monday’s missile attack. “The explosion was so huge that it was heard a long way from the checkpost,” local shopkeepers in Mir Ali said. “It shook the earth.”
Forty-two soldiers were killed in an attack on an army training centre in Dargai days after a similar missile attack on a madrassa in Bajaur in 2006 in which over 80 students were killed. At least 800 people have been killed in suicide attacks in Pakistan in the last 12 months. Many of the attacks have targeted the security forces.
Roadside bomb: In South Waziristan, two soldiers were wounded in a roadside blast targeting a military convoy, a military spokesman told Reuters. AFP said the blast occurred just outside Wana town. South Waziristan is the stronghold of wanted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud, who has been accused by Pakistani and US officials of masterminding the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.