| |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A suicide car bomb ripped through a Pakistan police station in the northwest city of Peshawar on Monday, devastating part of the building and killing at least four people, officials said.
It was the fifth suicide attack in eight days to hit the sprawling city of 2.5 million people, which lies on the edge of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, where the military is waging a major offensive against Taliban fighters.
A total of seven suicide attacks have killed 93 people in eight days in northwest Pakistan, which lies near the border with Afghanistan where 100,000 NATO and US troops are fighting against an escalating Taliban insurgency.
The explosives packed into the vehicle also caused extensive damage to a nearby mosque and brought down part of a boys' college, witnesses said.
Sahib Zada Anis, head of the northwestern city's administration, told reporters that three people were killed at the scene and dozens injured.
"One of the injured died at hospital. Now the death toll is four and there are 26 injured," doctor Zafar Iqbal at the main Lady Reading hospital told AFP.
Witnesses said that a pick-up vehicle sped towards the police station and exploded nearby, causing major damage to the building and structures.
"It was a suicide attack. A pickup came and the bomber blew it up outside the police station," senior police official Khursheed Khan told AFP.
The blast left a five-feet deep and nine feet wide crater (one metre by two metres), an official from the bomb disposal squad said.
Much of the police station was left in ruins and ambulances raced through the streets on the way to the site of the attack in the thickly populated suburb of Budh Ber, an AFP reporter said.
Pakistan's security forces are on the frontline of a deadly campaign of militant attacks that have killed more than 2,500 people in 28 months in the nuclear-armed Muslim country, recently increasing in frequency and intensity.
Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the homegrown Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has vowed to attack in the cities to avenge a military assault on its South Waziristan stronghold, now into a fifth week.
The TTP claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed 15 people in Peshawar on Saturday and the bombing of the Peshawar headquarters of the nation's top intelligence agency, the ISI, on Friday that killed 17 people.
Militant attacks, which have also started to inflict mass casualties in civilian targets such as market places, have killed more than 450 people – most of them in Peshawar – since early October.
Pakistan launched 30,000 troops into a three-pronged offensive into South Waziristan on October 17, an operation that has been strongly endorsed by the United States which aims to crush the TTP leadership and strongholds.
The military push followed a similar spring offensive in northwest Swat valley, which the army declared a success in July, although fighting continues.
On Sunday, about 50 militants from the banned Lashkar-e-Islam extremist group stormed the home of Fahimuddin, a local mayor who had raised a militia to fight the Taliban, in Bazid Khel village on Peshawar's outskirts.
Karim Khan, a senior police official in Peshawar, said three militants were killed in the clash with Fahimuddin's militia. The rest fled the scene.
Lashkar-e-Islam (Army of Islam), which has loose ties to TTP movement, enforces prayers five times a day and punishes people accused of prostitution, gambling and other vices.
- AFP/so
|
