Peshawar, Pakistan At least 24 people died in bomb attacks at a secondary school and a crowded market in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, officials said. Those attacks, which occurred with a few hours time difference between one and another, making the number of victims killed in bombings in Pakistan’s northwest to 73 in three days. Suicide attacks last weekend, characterized by the Taliban killed 49 people in the town of Kohat.
On Monday evening in Peshawar market Qissa Khawani, a suicide bomb attacker walked into the crowd and blew himself up. An AFP reporter at the scene saw scattered shoes, pieces of body and car were destroyed. “Twenty-three people were killed, including three policemen. At least 27 people hospitalized longer,” said senior police official told AFP Imran Kishwar. Senior provincial ministers Bashir Bilour confirm that toll.
Shafqat bomb squad chief Malik told reporters the explosion was caused by an attacker wearing a bomb vest weighing six to eight kilograms. We have found the attacker’s head and feet,” he added. The blast came after protesters who marched against rising inflation and power outages left the area, said some police.
Several hours earlier, a boy who was eight years old were killed and at least 10 people were injured in a bomb attack outside a middle school in Peshawar. Police did not say who had put the bomb in a city hit by Taliban attacks. Bombing came after three suicide attacks within 24 hours killed 49 people in the town of Kohat, Pakistan’s northwest.
More than 3200 people died in suicide attacks and bombings in Pakistan in three years. The violence was blamed on Muslim militants opposed to alliance with the U.S. government. Pakistan’s increasing international pressure to crush militant groups in the region and the northwest tribal zone amid rising attacks cross-border rebel against international forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s tribal areas, particularly Bajaur, plagued by violence since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels fled to the region after the US-led invasion in late 2001 toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Pakistani forces launched air and ground offensive into the South Waziristan tribal region on October 17, with 30,000 soldiers who assisted jet fighter and helicopter guns.
Although there is resistance in South Waziristan, many officials and analysts believe that most of the Taliban insurgents had fled to neighboring areas of North Waziristan and Orakzai. North Waziristan is the stronghold of the Taliban, militants associated with Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network, which is famous for attacking American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and the U.S. make that area as a target of missile attacks unmanned aircraft.
Some analysts have also warned that the Taliban and their allies will be stepped up attacks on security forces in Bajaur and other tribal areas to divert the focus of attention from South Waziristan. Security forces conduct large-scale operation against Islamic militants in the Mohmand and Bajaur in August 2008. In February 2009, the military said that net Bajaur after a fierce battle for months, but unrest continues.
According to the military, more than 1,500 militants have been killed since they launched an offensive in Bajaur in early August 2008, including Al-Qaeda’s operational commander in the area, Abu Saeed Al-Masri is an Egyptian. The area was also hit by a missile attack that almost about Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second person, in January 2006. U.S. forces declared, that border area is used for militant groups as a place to do training, a rearrangement of forces and launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan. ( AFP)