A suicide attacker rammed a bomb-laden motorbike into a Pakistani army bus taking medical staff to work yesterday in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, killing five people, police said.
The bomber struck during the morning rush-hour near the heavily guarded headquarters of the Pakistani military, mangling the minibus and damaging several other cars.
Security officials cordoned off the area.
Pakistan has been hit by a spike in violence linked to its struggle against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, raising fears for security in the nuclear-armed Islamic nation ahead of key elections scheduled for Feb. 18.
"It was a suicide attack, it appears that a man on a motorcycle packed with explosives rammed the bus," said Basharat Abbasi, the officer in charge of the local police station.
"Five people are confirmed dead and 25 are injured, some of them critically. We have launched an investigation," he said.
The army confirmed that four military personnel on the bus "embraced martyrdom" in a suicide attack, while a senior security official said a civilian in another vehicle also died.
The bus contained personnel from a military medical school in the city, security officials said. Most were trainees, but one officer was among the dead, they said.
The blast blew off the roof, windows and doors of the bus, leaving it a charred wreck. Troops covered remains with a white tent while military police ordered journalists to stay away from the scene.
Eyewitness Shiraz Khalid, a motor mechanic, said he was buying breakfast when he heard a huge blast and rushed to the scene.
"The bus was completely destroyed. I saw dozens of people lying injured and dead on the road, covered in blood -- most were wearing army uniforms. One was a woman," Khalid said. "We shifted at least three people to hospital before the army came."
Another witness, Haji Shaukat Khan, said he was opening his tire shop in the Royal Artillery Bazaar about 200m from the scene when he heard a "gigantic explosion."
"There was a big ball of fire and smoke. Some pellets from the bomb hit the wall of my shop and I dived down, because I was injured in the arm in another blast that happened at this spot last year," he said.
Rawalpindi has experienced a series of attacks on security forces in recent months which have been attributed to al-Qaeda and Taliban militants based in Pakistan's northwestern tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
A gun and suicide bomb attack on a political rally in a Rawalpindi park claimed the life of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27 and forced the postponement of national elections.
A suicide bomber killed seven people near Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's military office in the city on Oct. 30. Musharraf has since given up his role as chief of the army.
Two suicide bombers also blew themselves up in the city on Sept. 4 last year, killing 25 people. Most of the dead were in a bus taking intelligence officials to work.
All of those blasts have been blamed on an al-Qaeda-linked tribal warlord, Baitullah Mehsud.
Fighting between Pakistani forces and militants in the tribal areas has claimed more than 300 lives since the start of the year.
A US missile fired by a pilotless drone killed a senior al-Qaeda commander in the tribal region of North Waziristan last week. Seven soldiers were killed in a presumed revenge attack in the area on Friday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition