Three soldiers, bystander killed in N Waziristan suicide bombing

Three soldiers, bystander killed in N Waziristan suicide bombing
Militants claim responsibility; decline to revive peace deal

By By Rahimullah Yusufzai
PESHAWAR: Claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed three soldiers and a bystander on Tuesday at the Khajuri checkpoint sited at the entry-point to North Waziristan, tribal Islamic militants declined to take back their decision to scrap their peace accord with the government unless the Pakistan Army troops were withdrawn from roadside checkposts in the troubled tribal region.
Government officials, requesting anonymity, said the suicide bomber jumped from the roof of a truck when it stopped at the Khajuri checkpoint in the early afternoon and blew himself up by triggering his explosives-filled jacket. Three soldiers, including two from the Army and one from the paramilitary Frontier Corps, were caught in the explosion and killed. The slain soldiers were named Sepoy Bahadur Khan, Sepoy Hidayat and Sepoy Abid. A bystander was also killed and so was the unidentified suicide bomber.
Eyewitnesses said the security forces blocked traffic on the busy road, closed the gate at the Khajuri checkpoint and sealed the area. A long queue of vehicles could be seen on both sides of the Khajuri checkpoint.
Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad, Director-General, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), confirmed the death of three troopers in the suicide bombing at the Khajuri checkpoint near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan.
Earlier Tuesday, unknown people blew up two unmanned pickets, or posts, of the Khassadar tribal force in Miramshah, headquarters of North Waziristan. They reportedly used explosives to demolish the posts.
The militants, meanwhile, threatened more suicide attacks, roadside bombings and ambushes in North Waziristan. Their new spokesman Abdul Hye Ghazi told The News that one of their men sacrificed his life for a cause in the suicide bombing at the Khajuri checkpoint on Tuesday. Speaking from an unknown location in North Waziristan, he said there was no dearth of suicide bombers in their ranks and more would be sent on such missions in the days to come.
“The government should understand as to why young men were laying down their lives by undertaking ‘Fidayee’ attacks. It is not for nothing that they are offering the supreme sacrifice of their life,” he argued.
However, the militants’ spokesman denied reports that they had carried out the suicide bombing at the Police Lines in Dera Ismail Khan two days ago in which 28 people including policemen and candidates for recruitment in the police were killed. “That suicide attack was apparently carried out by those angry over the military operation against Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad,” he opined.
He said the suicide bombings and other attacks that took place before their decision to scrap the peace deal in North Waziristan were not ordered by their shura, or council. Ghazi, who took over from former militants’ spokesman Abdullah Farhad on Tuesday, said they would not take back their recent decision to scrap the peace agreement until the government agreed to pull back the soldiers redeployed by the military at a number of roadside checkpoints on the roads leading from Miramshah to Bannu, Razmak, Dattakhel and Gulam Khan.
He said the members of the peace committee reportedly sent by the NWFP governor had tried to establish contact with the militants’ Shoora but no meeting between them had taken place yet. “Our Shoora felt there was no need to hold talks on the issue. It felt talks could be opened once the government withdraws troops from the checkpoints in keeping with terms of the peace accord signed on September 5, 2006 and agrees to compensate families for losses suffered by them in previous military operations.
“We haven’t violated the peace deal. The government should admit its mistakes and make amends by honouring the terms of the agreement,” he stressed when told that the authorities were accusing the militants of not abiding by the accord.
NWFP Governor Lt-Gen (retd) Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai has said he had sent members of the peace committee to North Waziristan to contact the militants and save the peace accord. He said the peace deal was intact as far as the government was concerned.
Government functionaries in the past have accused the militants of not fulfilling their promise to expel foreign fighters from North Waziristan and put an end to cross-border infiltration to Afghanistan for launching attacks on US-led coalition forces. They were also upset over the killing of pro-government tribesmen in the area.
The US and its Western allies and the Afghan government were critical of the 10-month old peace deal and had complained that it enabled the foreign militants to find safe havens in North Waziristan.
Meanwhile, it was learnt that the governor has summoned 15 members of the North Waziristan peace committee to Peshawar on Thursday to discuss the issue and think of ways and means to revive the peace accord. The 45-member grand Jirga that was drawn from all seven tribal agencies and six Frontier Regions and had played a crucial role in brokering last September’s peace deal has also been summoned to Peshawar on July 19.
Meanwhile, according to our Bajaur correspondent a woman sustained severe injuries when an explosive device planted by unknown miscreant went off at Salarzai area. The injured was shifted to a hospital in Khar where doctors reported her in critical condition. And according to our Chakdarra correspondent, a bomb explosion targeted a police vehicle at Gulabad Bridge near Chakdarra in Lower Dir district Tuesday injuring two cops.
At the Agency Headquarters Hospital in nearby Batkhela town in Malakand Agency, doctors said the wounded policemen were in stable condition as their injuries were not very serious. Among them were Mohammad Naeem Khan, station house officer of the Ouch police station, and police constable Iqbal Hussain.
Police sources said the police were patrolling the area when unknown attackers tried to blow it up with a bomb planted near the Gulabad Bridge. They said the blast was triggered by remote control device.
The blast was heard far and wide and it created a crater. But the police vehicle didn’t receive much damage and there were no casualties among the cops seated in it. The district police officer Lower Dir, Khurshid Khan, rushed to the site of the blast and started supervising investigations into the incident.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the explosion but people in the area felt it could be linked to the deployment of Pakistan Army troops in Chakdarra, Timergara and Samarbagh in Lower Dir district in the aftermath of the military operation against Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad. The population in Lower Dir and other adjoining districts in Malakand division had reacted angrily to the bloody military operation against the mosque and madrasa complex in which scores of male and female students mostly belonging to the NWFP were killed.
Agencies add: Meanwhile, a government-backed mediator who met with tribal elders said he was hopeful that the pact could still be salvaged by the government and a tribal Jirga. “We want the Jirga to mediate and it should see from which sides mistakes have been made,” Maulana Nek Zaman, a local lawmaker, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.