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Investigators look for clues in bombing

Investigators sifted through the wreckage of a bombed-out restaurant in Pakistan's capital and scoured a government database yesterday to try to identify the remains of a suicide attacker who killed 13 people a day earlier.

Officials also vowed to launch a top-level inquiry into why intelligence that warned of a potential attack at the busy downtown marketplace where Friday's blast occurred was not acted upon.

A joint task force of federal police and intelligence agencies has been formed to investigate the blast, which targeted security forces and injured 71 people, mostly bystanders, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said yesterday.

The attack at the open-air restaurant frequented by police happened shortly after protesters clashed with authorities as the city's radical Red Mosque reopened for the first time since the army ousted Islamic militants in a bloody raid.

Police found a torso and head among the wreckage that they believe are the remains of a suicide bomber.

Sherpao said identifying the remains was difficult because they were mangled in the blast, which had blown the man's nose off. A search of the national identity card database had so far failed to reveal any leads, he said.

"We don't have any information with regard to the suicide bomber," he said.

The blast was the latest in a string of militant revenge attacks on government forces since the mosque raid and deepened the security crisis facing embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said late on Friday the government had received intelligence about a possible suicide bombing in the Aabpara market where the attack happened about 5:15pm on Friday.

He said there would be an official inquiry into the security lapse, but he also blamed the mosque unrest for creating the conditions in which an attacker could strike.

"If these people had not created such a situation it would not have happened," he said, adding that the Red Mosque had been closed.

Authorities had hoped to restore normalcy to the Pakistani capital by reopening the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, to the public, more than two weeks after the commando raid that dislodged militant supporters of the mosque's pro-Taliban clerics. More than 100 people died.

But religious students on Friday staged protests inside the mosque compound and occupied it for several hours.
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