ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomb strike on a crowded courthouse in
Peshawar killed 19 people Thursday, the 10th bomb attack in six weeks for a
city bearing the brunt of retaliation from Taliban militants battling Pakistani
troops along the Afghan border.
Now in its fifth week, Pakistan’s military offensive has
succeeded in retaking much of the ground held by Taliban and al-Qaida fighters
in South Waziristan, for years the militants’ primary stronghold. That success,
however, has been tempered by a wave of militant attacks since early October
that have claimed more than 300 lives across Pakistan.
Peshawar, a city of nearly 3 million people situated on the
fringe of Pakistan’s largely ungoverned tribal areas, has been hardest hit by
the violence. Suicide bombers have struck bustling markets, police stations and
checkposts, and even the regional headquarters of the country’s vaunted
intelligence agency.
With Thursday’s strike, the death toll from the wave of
attacks around Peshawar since early October has reached at least 247 people.
Authorities said the attacker tried to push his way into the
city’s Judicial Complex but was stopped by police officers at the courthouse’s
main gate. When they tried to search him, he detonated a jacket filled with
explosives, said Sahibzada Muhammad Anees, a Peshawar city official.
At least three of those killed were police officers. The
blast occurred about 10:30 a.m., a period when the building is filled with
Pakistani citizens and lawyers shuttling between courtrooms. Doctors said
several lawyers were among the critically injured brought to the city’s Lady
Reading Hospital. At least 51 people were wounded in the attack.
Authorities said the toll would have been far worse if
police officers at the main gate had not stopped the attacker. Their actions
marked the third time in five days that police in the Peshawar region kept an
attacker from causing far greater loss of life. Suicide car bomb attacks on
Saturday and Monday occurred at police checkposts on the outskirts of the city,
which authorities believe were not the intended targets.
Nevertheless, the wave of attacks has cast a pall on
everyday life in Peshawar, where Pakistanis are limiting their trips to markets
and many parents are keeping their children from attending school. Dozens of
streets have been closed off with barricades.
Local officials blame much of the violence in Peshawar on
the federal government’s decision to announce its intent to launch an offensive
against the Taliban in South Waziristan weeks before sending troops into the
region. That gave militants ample time to escape and seek refuge in places like
Peshawar’s suburbs. Many of the attacks hitting the city are being launched
from those suburbs.
“If you look at Peshawar, it’s a hub for dozens of
smaller towns,” said Imtiaz Gul, an Islamabad-based security analyst.
“To create a scare, the easiest place to hit is Peshawar. What you need is
penetration into the militants’ networks in the suburbs, and that’s missing
right now. We don’t have the required intelligence resources. There have been
arrests, but that’s not enough.”
Authorities have beefed up security throughout the city and
have begun using sophisticated explosive detector equipment at checkposts, but
the sheer number of entry points into the city — at least 110 — makes it
extremely difficult to thwart every potential bomb attack.
“We are facing an extraordinary situation,” said
Anees. “Police are there, but it’s not humanly possible to check each and
every person.”
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
