A Pakistani policeman examines a burnt car in Peshawar July 14, 2007. Authorities in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Saturday discovered two anti-tank mines hooked up to a timer in the car, which was abandoned and set on fire by unknown people on a main city street. It was safely dismantled. REUTERS/Ali Imam (PAKISTAN)
Bombing targets Pakistani police recruits
Suicide blast kills at least 26 people in surge of violence in border zone
By Zulfiqar Ali and Laura King
July 16, 2007
PESHAWAR, Pakistan
A suicide bomber blew himself up at a police recruitment center near Pakistan's volatile tribal region yesterday, killing at least 26 people, injuring nearly 60 and bringing the death toll in weekend attacks in the border zone to more than 70.
The surge in violence comes on the heels of last week's government storming of a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad, a clash that left more than 100 people dead and raised the specter of a full-blown war between Islamic militants and the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Adding to the likelihood of a prolonged period of strife, militants in North Waziristan, one of the tribal areas, announced yesterday that they were annulling a 10-month-old cease-fire accord with the government. That deal had already been in tatters -- and had been widely criticized since its inception -- but the insurgents' decision to scrap it indicated that they wanted no impediment to an all-out fight with government forces.
The turmoil has heightened speculation that the Pakistani president, who also is the chief of the military, might use the growing threat posed by militants as a justification for declaring a state of emergency and putting off elections scheduled for this year.
Before the mosque raid, Musharraf had been under heavy pressure from a grass-roots pro-democracy movement to renounce his army post and allow free and fair balloting. But public sentiment generally supported his decision to use force against those holed up inside the mosque, which had become the center of a vigilante-style anti-vice campaign.
That support has given the Pakistani leader something of a respite from the previous political crisis, but it has also plunged him into what is shaping up as the most serious confrontation in years with militant groups, who have enjoyed longtime patronage from Pakistan's intelligence establishment.
Islamic insurgent groups, many of them based in the little-governed region bordering Afghanistan, have vowed to avenge the assault on the Red Mosque. But the border zone has long been the focus of U.S. intelligence concerns about the regrouping and rearming of elements of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The attack on the recruitment center occurred in Dera Ismail Khan, which is adjacent to the South Waziristan tribal region, also a militant stronghold. The police are in the midst of a recruiting drive, and witnesses said the center was packed with job applicants taking written examinations and having medical checkups.
Trouble had been expected in Dera Ismail Khan, where three would-be suicide bombers were arrested Friday. Authorities also seized an explosives-laden car.
The powerful explosion left the recruiting center's main reception area littered with charred corpses. About half of the dead were police officers and the remainder new recruits, authorities said.
Militants issued fresh threats yesterday against police in the tribal areas, ordering them not to cooperate with thousands of army and paramilitary forces deployed in the border zone after the Red Mosque raid.
Hours before the attack on the recruitment center, militants staged a sophisticated, multipronged assault on a military convoy traveling in the rugged, mountainous district of Swat, which lies within Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan.
The convoy was hit near the town of Matta by two suicide bombers and a roadside bomb, military officials said. At least 18 people were killed and 48 hurt, including about seven civilians.
Until recently, Swat district had been relatively quiet, but it was known to be a base for forces aligned with a prominent militant leader, Mullah Fazullah.
Fazullah, speaking yesterday on an illegally operated radio station, said he was going into hiding. After the Red Mosque raid, he called on followers to wage war against the government.
Zulfiqar Ali and Laura King write for the Los Angeles Times.
Suicide blast kills 12 in northwest Pakistan police centre
Photo: AFP
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A suicide bomber killed at least 12 people and wounded 20 more Sunday at a police recruitment centre in northwest Pakistan in the weekend's third major bomb attack, police said.
The latest attack raised to 53 the death toll from the series of strikes that have rocked Pakistan since Saturday, after Muslim hardliners called for holy war following last week's storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
"It was a suicide attack," senior police official Sharif Virk told AFP after the latest attack, which took place in the town of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan's troubled North West Frontier Province near the Afghan border.
"The bomber targeted a police recruiting centre where recruits had gathered for an entrance test."
Another police official at the scene said there were "at least 12 bodies lying in the police recruitment centre".
Earlier, in the same province, suicide bombers in two explosives-packed cars hit a Pakistan army convoy, killing at least 17 people, including 12 security forces and five civilians.
The civilian dead were a family of four buried when the blasts destroyed their house and a petrol station attendant hit by shrapnel, said mayor Jabbar Khan.
On Saturday a suicide car bomber killed 24 people in a paramilitary convoy in the tribal region of North Waziristan, where local militant leaders on Sunday said they would scrap a 2006 peace accord with the government.
Last week's Red Mosque raid led Al-Qaeda's number two to call for jihad, or holy war, against the Pakistan government, which has sent thousands of troops into remote areas to try to keep a lid on bubbling popular anger.
Copyright © 2005 AFP.
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