Sixteen killed in Pakistan suicide attack

PAKISTAN: A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a minibus as police tried to arrest him in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 16 people including a policeman and a soldier, officials said.

The blast happened in Dera Ismail Khan, a remote town close to Pakistan’s troubled tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where there have been several attacks blamed on pro-Taliban militants.

Pakistan has suffered a string of bombings since security forces raided the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad in July, piling pressure on President Pervez Musharraf as he clings to power ahead of elections.

“It was a suicide attack. Police started chasing him because he was acting suspiciously and he jumped into a minibus before blowing himself up,” police chief Mohammad Khaliq told AFP.

The 16 dead included a policeman, a paramilitary soldier and fourteen civilians, one of whom was a woman, he said. Another 16 were injured including four police officials.

Body parts were scattered on the ground and the minibus was completely destroyed by the blast, police officer Abdul Hai said from the scene of the attack.

Police said they believed the bomber was trying to target government or security force officials in the town but detonated himself when he was detected.

The attack came hours after a bomb detonated by pro-Taliban militants Tuesday damaged a rock engraved with images of Buddha in another part of northwest Pakistan that attracts thousands of tourists yearly, police said.

Shrapnel from the blast in the town of Malam Jabba in Pakistan’s Swat district hit the rock but did not damage the Buddhist images.

Nearly 250 people have died in extremist attacks since July’s Red Mosque crisis, most of which have been suicide bombings. A further 250 militants have been killed in clashes since the mosque standoff, the army says.

Around 30 people were killed a week ago when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, ripping through a military bus and a market near the Pakistani army’s headquarters.

Musharraf has been under mounting pressure to tackle Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, whom US officials allege have regrouped in the tribal areas since fleeing there after the events of 9/11.

AFP