A suicide bomber targeting security forces in Pakistan’s Swat Valley yesterday killed at least 10 people, police said, part of a renewed Taliban push against the government after a major crackdown against the group.
The assault near a security checkpost came a day after a suicide attack on the military killed at least 45 people in the city of Lahore.
“The bomber was in a rickshaw,” said Qazi Ghulam Farooq, Mingora city police chief.
The attack killed two soldiers, three policemen and five civilians, police said.
“When I got there, I saw a burning vehicle. At least five people, including some women, who burned to death,” a witness said.
The road leading to Mingora’s main courthouse was blocked by concrete blocks, sand bags and barbed wire. The blast left two rickshaws twisted and a car burning. Windows in nearby buildings were shattered.
Militants have gone on the offensive again after a relative lull in violence, challenging government assertions that an offensive in the militant stronghold of South Waziristan had dealt a major blow to the al-Qaeda-backed Pakistani Taliban.
Underscoring the alarm in Pakistan, one front-page newspaper headline read: “Lahore Under Terror Siege.”
The latest wave of violence is likely to worry the US in several ways. For one, it will raise fresh questions about stability in Pakistan.
Washington may be concerned attacks will force Pakistan to further focus on fighting homegrown Taliban, instead of hunting Afghan militants who cross the border to attack US troops in Afghanistan, the White House’s main priority as it tries to stabilize the country ahead of the start of a US troop pullout next year.
The blast in Mingora, Swat’s main town, was the sixth this week, and will add to pressure on Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari during a critical period. The economy is sluggish and foreign investors have been scared away by violence.
The unpopular Zardari also faces calls to hand over his major powers — such as the right to dissolve parliament and choose the army chief — to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.
Unlike Zardari, Gilani has not antagonized Pakistan’s all-powerful military. That means he may have the best chance of stabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear-armed US ally with a history of political turmoil.
Nawaz Sharif, seen as Pakistan’s most popular politician, has again accused Zardari of being the biggest threat to democracy in the country, local newspaper The News reported yesterday.
It said Sharif told a group of Pakistanis in London that Zardari must change his ways and that he was under pressure from all sides.
Amid the political turmoil, the attack yesterday is likely to refocus attention on security in Swat, a former tourist valley 120km northwest of Islamabad.
On Feb. 22, a suspected suicide bomber killed six people in an attack on a security forces convoy in a market in Mingora, police said.
In April last year, the military launched a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat, and largely cleared Islamist fighters out after months of clashes.
The assault came after Pakistani militants flocked there to support a Muslim cleric trying to impose Taliban-style rule. The militant takeover of Swat and their later march into an adjacent valley raised fears for the stability of Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a twin suicide attack in Pakistan’s cultural capital Lahore rose to 57 yesterday, as 12 more critically wounded died overnight, police said.
On Friday, two suicide bombers walked up to army vehicles in the crowded R A Bazaar area of Lahore, blowing themselves up as people sat down to eat before the main Muslim weekly prayers, police said.
Later that evening, five small bombs exploded elsewhere in Lahore causing no casualties and only minor damage, police said.
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