A former provincial minister and three other people have been killed in a bomb attack at north-western Pakistani town of Hangu

Asif Ali Zardari

A former provincial minister and three other people have been killed in a bomb attack near the north-western Pakistani town of Hangu, police said.Ghani ur-Rhaman, a former North-West Frontier Province education minister, died when a roadside bomb exploded next to the car in which he was travelling. His driver, bodyguard and a friend were also killed, officials said. The attack comes two days after 99 people were killed by an explosion at a volleyball tournament in Lakki Marwat.

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, condemned the attack and said Washington would continue supporting Pakistan’s efforts to combat extremism and bolster democracy. For his part, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said such actions would not weaken his government’s resolve to fight terrorism. Lakki Marwat lies in an area regarded as a Taliban stronghold until recently, when the militants were driven out by the Pakistani army.

Pakistan teror attack a warning to anti-Taliban tribes

Pakistani paramilitary soldiers

SHAH HASAN KHEL, Pakistan  A suicide car bombing that killed 88 people on a volleyball field sent a bloody New Year’s warning to Pakistanis who have formed militias to fend off Taliban insurgents in the northwestern region near the Afghan border.The attack on the outskirts of Lakki Marwat city was one of the deadliest in recent Pakistani history. As local tribesmen prepared for funerals Saturday, rescuers searched rubble for more bodies, and many in the area were too terrified to speculate who staged the assault.

The suicide bomber detonated some 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of high-intensity explosives on the crowded field in Shah Hasan Khel village during a volleyball tournament held Friday near a meeting of anti-Taliban elders. The elders, who had helped set up an anti-Taliban militia in the area, were probably the actual target, police said.

Lakki Marwat district is near South Waziristan, a tribal region where the army has been battling the Pakistani Taliban since October.
The military operation was undertaken with the backing of the U.S., which is eager for Pakistan to free its tribal belt of militants believed to be involved in attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan. The offensive has provoked apparent reprisal attacks that had already killed more than 500 people in Pakistan before Friday’s blast.

Militants have struck all across the nuclear-armed country, and they appear increasingly willing to hit groups beyond security forces. No group claimed responsibility for Friday’s blast, but that is not uncommon when many civilians are killed.Across Pakistan’s northwest, where the police force is thin, underpaid and under-equipped, various tribes have taken security in their own hands over the past two years by setting up citizen militias to fend off the Taliban.

The government has encouraged such “lashkars,” and in some areas they have proven key to reducing militant activity.Still, tribal leaders who face off with the militants do so at high personal risk. Several suicide attacks have targeted meetings of anti-Taliban elders, and militants also often go after individuals. One reason militancy has spread in Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal belt is because insurgents have slain dozens of tribal elders and filled a power vacuum.

Shah Hasan Khel village “has been a hub of militants. Locals set up a militia and expelled the militants from this area. This attack seems to be reaction to their expulsion,” local police Chief Ayub Khan told reporters.Mohammed Qayyum, 22, tried to avoid crying Saturday as he recounted how his younger brother died when the explosion shook the neighborhood. His family’s house was among the more than three dozen nearby mud-brick homes that toppled.”After the blast, I heard cries, I saw dust, and I saw injured and dead bodies,” said Qayyum, who escaped injury. “See this rubble, see these destroyed homes? Everybody was happy before the explosion, but today we are mourning.”

Like many others in the village that had prided itself on standing up to the militants, Qayyum refused to comment when asked who he thought was behind the bombing.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attack.”The United States will continue to stand with the people of Pakistan in their efforts to chart their own future free from fear and intimidation and will support their efforts to combat violent extremism and bolster democracy,” she said in a statement.Authorities said about 300 people were on the field at the time of Friday’s blast and security had been provided for the games and the tribal elders’ meeting. Police official Tajammal Shah said Saturday that 88 people died and 50 were wounded. Eight children, six paramilitary troops and two police were among the dead, he said.

Omar Gull, 35, a wounded paramilitary soldier, said the attacker drove recklessly into the crowd and people were trying to figure out what was happening when the explosives detonated. “It was then chaos,” he said.The attack was one of the deadliest in years, and the second deadliest since the latest wave of bloodshed began in October. A car bomb killed 112 people at a crowded market in Peshawar on Oct. 28.Regional Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain reiterated the government’s resolve to target militants wherever they may be, saying, “We need to be more on the offensive to fight them.”(AP)

Pakistan ISLAMABAD suicide bombing death toll rises to 8

Shiite Muslim

ISLAMABAD The death toll from a suicide bombing at a Shiite Muslim gathering in the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir increased to eight Monday, police said, as minority Shiites marked the key holy day of Ashura.Another 80 people were wounded in Sunday night’s bombing in Muzaffarabad – a rare sectarian attack in an area police say has little history of militant violence. The dead included three police, said police official Yasin Baig, adding that another 10 police were among the wounded.The suicide bomber set off explosives he was carrying as police searched him outside a ceremony commemorating the seventh century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson during the Islamic holy month of Muharram.Security has been tightened across Pakistan during Muharram, and particularly for Monday’s Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram, a month of mourning that is often marred by bombings and fighting between Pakistan’s Sunni Muslim majority and its Shiite minority.

In the northwestern city of Peshawar, which has been repeatedly hit by suicide bombings in the past months, thousands of police were guarding processions, and troops were on standby, local police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said.

“Our security level is red alert,” Khan said, adding that the recent wave of attacks required police to be extra vigilant.

More than 500 people have been killed in attacks across Pakistan since October. Insurgents are suspected of avenging a U.S.-supported Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban in a northwest tribal region along the Afghan border.Maj. Aurangzeb Khan said paramilitary forces were deployed and were carrying out helicopter patrols in the southern port city of Karachi, where a blast that authorities attributed to a buildup of gas in a sewage pipe wounded about 30 people on Sunday.

“Our men will remain with all the processions till their culmination,” Khan said.To the east in Lahore, all entry and exit points to processions were blocked to traffic and anyone joining a procession had to pass through scanners, said police official Chaudhry Shafiq.

“There is always a threat, especially in the ongoing terror attacks,” Shafiq said.After Sunday night’s bombing in Kashmir’s Muzaffarabad, Baig, the police official there, said Shiite mourners at the commemoration ceremony took to the streets to protest the bombing, with some firing shots in the air. Baig said authorities restored order within about an hour.

He said it was the first time a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite gathering in the region.Muslim militants have fought for decades to free Kashmir, which is split between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, from New Delhi’s rule. But while Muzaffarabad has served as a base for anti-India insurgents to train and launch attacks, the capital – and most of the Pakistani side – has largely been spared any violence, with militants focusing on the Indian-controlled portion.

The bombing highlights the growing extremism of militants in Pakistani Kashmir. Many of the region’s armed groups were started with support from Islamabad. But some of them have turned against their former patrons and joined forces with the Taliban because the government has reduced its support under U.S. pressure.

The partnership is a dangerous development for Pakistan as it could enable the Taliban to carry out attacks more easily outside its sanctuary in the country’s tribal areas in the northwest. More than 500 people have been killed in retaliatory attacks since the military launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in mid-October in the militant stronghold of South Waziristan near the Afghan border.