PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Suicide bomb attacks killed at least 17
people Friday at two security installations in and near the Pakistani city of
Peshawar, including a devastating truck bomb at the provincial headquarters of
the nation’s intelligence agency, underscored security forces’ vulnerability as
they struggle to clamp down on a resilient insurgency.
The suicide truck bomb blast at the Inter-Services
Intelligence complex that killed 10 people early Friday morning was the second
militant strike on the country’s premier spy agency this year. In May, a van
packed with explosives razed the intelligence agency’s provincial headquarters
and a police building in the eastern city of Lahore, killing more than two
dozen people.
The truck bomb blast in Peshawar, which also injured more
than 60 people, was followed by a suicide car bomb attack an hour later at a
police station in the village of Bakkakhel, about 75 miles southwest of
Peshawar. That blast killed seven people and wounded 27.
The attacks in Peshawar and Bakkakhel were the latest in a
long line of strikes on security compounds and facilities across Pakistan in
recent weeks as the government moved ahead with its plan to send 30,000 troops
into South Waziristan to uproot Taliban and al-Qaida militant strongholds there.
The boldest of those attacks was on the army’s headquarters
in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Oct. 10. A team of militants dressed as
paramilitary police raided the heavily guarded compound and took scores of
officers and civilian workers hostage. Pakistani commandos rescued most of the
hostages, but 14 people were killed in the 22-hour siege.
Less than a week later, teams of militants carried out
near-simultaneous attacks on three security compounds around Lahore, including
an elite forces counter-terrorism training center. At least 26 people were
killed in those attacks.
Other attacks on security facilities include a suicide bomb
attack on a police station in Peshawar on Oct. 16 that killed 13 people, and
another suicide attack on an air force complex west of Islamabad, the capital,
that killed seven people.
In the blast in Peshawar on Friday, authorities said a truck
filled with 600 pounds of explosives drove up to the front gate of the
intelligence agency’s regional headquarters, a complex situated in one of the
city’s most heavily guarded areas. Guards at the gate fired at the truck, but
the bomber was able to detonate the explosives, which razed most of the
agency’s three-story building.
Among the wounded were civilians passing by the complex when
the blast occurred about 6:45 a.m. Mir Wais, a 35-year-old taxi driver, was
driving his daughters to the nearby town of Swabi when they were injured in the
explosion. His daughters, Rana, 6, and Khwaga, 5, lay in beds at Lady Reading
Hospital, their faces and hands heavily bandaged.
“Life’s becoming so difficult for us,” said the
girls’ grandmother, Bas Pano, 55, as she sat beside their beds. “Our men
can’t go to work to earn money for their families because of the bomb blasts.
The father of these girls, he can’t go to the markets to get groceries because
of the explosions.”
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
