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| India-Pakistan |
| 13 dead as suicide bombers strike Pakistan police |
| 2009-10-17 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] A twin suicide attack tore through a police compound in Pakistan on Friday, killing 13 people and heightening public anger over security breaches behind a wave of recent attacks. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed power with a weak government on the frontline of the U.S.-led war on terror, has been battered by assaults that have left more than 170 people dead in 11 days. A woman suicide bomber on a motorbike and a car bomber unleashed fresh chaos Friday, detonating near a police investigations office in a garrison area of the northwestern city of Peshawar, heavily damaging the building, police said. It was only the second suicide bomb attack by a woman in Pakistan. The twin blasts flung human limbs across the street, splattering blood on the ground and scattering shoes, an AFP reporter at the scene saw. It was the second bomb attack in Peshawar in 24 hours, striking a day after 40 people died in a wave of militant attacks against security targets in Pakistan's eastern city Lahore and the country's volatile northwest. Army attacks on Taliban "I have counted 13 dead bodies and 13 wounded in the emergency unit of the hospital," police official Mohammad Gul told AFP by telephone from the main government-run hospital in Peshawar. Ambulances screeched through the streets, sirens blaring as rescue teams rushed to the scene of the attack, where TV footage showed smoldering wreckage and a damaged brick wall. North West Frontier Province police chief Malik Navid told Pakistan's state PTV it was an apparent suicide attack, with the bomber driving a car. The bomb ripped through the police-run Central Investigation Agency (CIA) building in Peshawar -- the largest city in northwest Pakistan which lies on the fringes of the lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border. The government, meanwhile, says a ground offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in their South Waziristan lair is imminent and the army has been stepping up its air and artillery attacks in recent days to soften up the militants' defenses. Aircraft and artillery struck militant positions in their strongholds of Ladha, Makeen and in the mountainous Shahoor region overnight, hours after killing 27 militants in the region in various strikes. "We could see thick smoke and flames leaping into the sky from caves in the mountains after the bombing by jet fighters," said a resident near Shahoor who declined to be identified. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is under U.S. pressure to crack down on Islamic militancy as President Barack Obama considers a boost in troop numbers fighting in neighboring Afghanistan. |
| Posted by:Fred |