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Danish embassy bombing considered isolated event

Officials said yesterday that Pakistani Taliban militants were suspected of being behind the suicide attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad in revenge for controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

But the car bombing on Monday was believed to be a one-off and would not scupper peace talks between the Islamist rebels and Pakistan’s new government, a senior government official said.

A Danish citizen of Pakistani origin was killed in the attack in Islamabad on Monday, an official at the Danish Foreign Ministry said.

The victim was not one of the four Danes stationed at the embassy, he said.

The ministry said two Pakistani employees were also killed in the attack, which left at least nine dead and nearly 30 injured.

Security officials said a stolen car with fake diplomatic plates was used in the bombing and that the explosives were of a type used in previous attacks attributed to Taliban militants in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

“It appears to be a one-off attack which has little relevance to the ongoing negotiations between Taliban and the authorities,” the government official said.

“This attack was not born out of the events in the country or the region, rather it was part of global outrage in the Islamic world against publishing blasphemous cartoons,” the official said.

Danish newspapers first published the cartoons in 2005, sparking violent protests in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Several dailies reprinted the sketches in February this year.

The Danish embassy, located outside Islamabad’s secure diplomatic enclave, was recently downgraded and staff were relocated.

A joint team of investigators has been set up, including police, the special investigation unit of the Federal Intelligence Agency (FIA) and Pakistani intelligence services, to probe the blast, the government official said.

A senior security official said the bomb contained at least 25kg of the same type of explosive used in a massive suicide bombing at FIA’s offices in Lahore in March.

That attack was blamed on Pakistani Taliban militants, who agreed to talks with the government after parties allied with US-backed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf were defeated in elections in February.

Osama bin Laden’s extremist network has made recent calls for attacks on Danish targets because of the cartoons.

The preparations for the Danish blast were “meticulous, similar to previous attacks by Taliban linked to al-Qaeda” and involved a car stolen from the northwestern city of Peshawar, the security official said.

However, the attack itself was “poorly executed” and the bomb went off several meters from the gate of the embassy, officials said.
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