| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| Suicide bomber kills 12 in Pakistan |
| 2013-03-29 |
| A suicide bomber on Friday targeted a senior Pakistani police commander, killing 12 people, including two women, near the US consulate in Peshawar, officials said. It was the latest in a string of attacks as the country prepares to hold historic elections on May 11. The vote will mark the first democratic transition of power in Pakistan, which has been governed by four military rulers. A security official said Abdul Majeed Marwat, commander of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, survived the attack and was taken to a military hospital with "only scratches". Around 28 other people were wounded in the blast, medics said. "It was a suicide attack, the target was the FC commander," police official Arshad Khan told AFP. Witnesses said the bomber was on foot and struck when the convoy of the police chief stopped at a military checkpost in the busy cantonment area of Peshawar. The checkpost is about 300 metres from the heavily guarded American consulate, which has itself been the target of attacks in the past, an AFP reporter said. "We have received six dead bodies, including two women," Sayed Jameel Shah, a spokesman for Peshawar's main Lady Reading Hospital, told AFP. He later confirmed that two of the injured died in hospital. "They were in serious condition in the neurosurgery ward," he said. Another four bodies and 17 other wounded were taken to the Combined Military Hospital, a senior security official told AFP. |
| Posted by:tipper |