A suicide car bomber struck near a busy cattle market in Pakistan’s Peshawar city yesterday, killing 12 people, including a former Taliban supporter turned anti-militant mayor, police said.
The bomber also wounded 36 people outside a property of Mayor Abdul Malik on the outskirts of the northwest city troubled by Islamist militancy. Malik, one of a number of city mayors, had raised a militia against Taliban rebels.
Pakistan is currently waging a military offensive against the insurgents in their northwest mountain hideouts, incurring the wrath of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group, which has retaliated with a wave of deadly attacks.
“The suicide bomber came in a car and exploded it when the mayor was standing with some visitors outside his guesthouse near the local livestock market,” district administration chief Sahibzada Anis said.
Doctor Muslim Khan at Peshawar’s main Lady Reading hospital said that 12 people were killed and 36 wounded in the attack. Hospital officials said that two children were among the dead.
“Abdul Malik and a commander of the local anti-Taliban force are also among the dead,” Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said.
Malik, mayor of Adizai suburb on Peshawar’s outskirts, once had close links to the hardline Taliban movement, but switched sides last year and had raised a local force to battle the Islamist extremists on the fringes of the city.
The mayor had in the past survived a number of attempts on his life by his former allies, who are battling Pakistan’s government and want to impose a harsh brand of Islamic law across swathes of the northwest.
The attacker detonated his explosives-packed car close to both Malik’s guesthouse and the cattle market, littering the road with the corpses of cows and twisted metal from ruined vehicles, police and witnesses said.
Mahabat Khan, a 50-year-old livestock dealer, said he had just sold a buffalo and was talking to the buyer outside the market when a huge blast suddenly knocked him to the ground.
“It was a huge blast near us and my foot was injured,” Khan said from his hospital bed. “I heard gunshots after the blast.”
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of blasts and attacks killing more than 350 people since early last month. In the deadliest attack in two years, a car bombing killed 118 people on Oct. 28 in Peshawar, the northwest capital.
Islamabad has blamed the attacks on TTP militants avenging both the military offensive against them and the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone missile strike in the rugged northwest tribal belt in August.
Pakistan launched a fierce, US-endorsed air and ground offensive into South Waziristan on Oct. 17, with some 30,000 troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships laying siege to the Pakistan Taliban’s boltholes.
The semi-autonomous tribal belt has become a bastion for Taliban and al-Qaeda rebels after the 2001 US-led invasion drove them out of Afghanistan, and Washington says the region is one of the world’s most dangerous zones.
The long-awaited assault into the tribal region came after a spring offensive in and around the northwestern Swat valley, which the government declared a success in July. However, sporadic outbreaks of violence continue.
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
RSS