A suicide bomber rammed a car into troops yesterday in Pakistan’s troubled northwest, killing four civilians and a soldier, as more clashes with Taliban militants put a peace deal under strain.
The deadly attack came on the eve of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s first face-to-face talks with US President Barack Obama, with Washington concerned that emboldened militants are threatening Pakistan’s very existence.
The bomber ploughed a car packed with explosives into the back of a paramilitary jeep at a checkpoint near Bara, where the northwest city Peshawar runs into the Taliban and al-Qaeda-infested tribal area of Khyber.
Rescue workers picked charred bodies out of the wreckage, as police and hospital officials said four civilians and a paramilitary soldier were killed.
Police said 21 people were also wounded, including several children who were waiting for a van to take them to school.
“As the vehicle stopped at a police checkpoint the bomber hit his explosives-laden car from behind,” police officer Abdul Ghafoor said.
There was no immediate claim for the attack, but Pakistan’s paramilitary are locked in a fierce offensive in the northwest against Taliban bitterly opposed to the government’s cooperation with the US in the “war on terror.”
Zardari is in the US preparing for talks with Obama today, hoping to secure a massive US aid package to better equip the military and boost development in his cash-strapped nuclear power sector.
His weak civilian government is under US pressure to crush militants in the northwest, where Washington says al-Qaeda, Taliban and other militants pose the biggest terror threat to the West and an “existential threat” to Pakistan.
The White House talks, which also involve Afghan President Hamid Karzai, are part of a sweeping new US strategy designed to defeat Islamist militants threatening the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A government official said five people died in crossfire between militants and security forces in Swat, where a once-thriving tourist industry has been decimated by a brutal insurgency to impose Islamic law.
The military said militant attacks were foiled and vowed to crush the extremists, who hold sway in vast swathes of the northwest despite nearly two years of Pakistani military operations.
Sporadic gunfire continued to rattle through different places in Mingora after daybreak, officials and residents said.
“Security forces beat back militant attacks on Mingora police station and a power grid station,” local military spokesman Major Nasir Khan said.
“The city is under control and security forces are patrolling … We will crush these militants,” he said.
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