A suicide car bomb attack hit a Pakistani police checkpoint on the outskirts of Peshawar before dawn yesterday, killing four police and wounding 11 people, including a woman and a cleric.
Northwest Pakistan is on the front line of the country’s battle against Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants holed up in the tribal belt on the Afghan border, which is subject to Pakistani military operations and US drone attacks.
More than 50 bomb attacks have struck the nuclear-armed country so far this year, killing around 500 people, and a string of deadly attacks this month have been largely concentrated in the northwest.
Yesterday’s attacker struck the checkpoint in Pir Bala village, on the main road from Peshawar, Pakistan’s northwestern capital, to Mohmand, one of seven districts in the al-Qaeda and Taliban-infested tribal belt.
The force of the blast practically destroyed the one-story mud-brick building at the police post and damaged nearby houses, witnesses said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf is planning to launch a political party in a comeback bid two years after he was unseated in elections, officials said yesterday.
Musharraf, who has been abroad since leaving office after nine years in power, could face trial if he returns home and is wanted for questioning by the current government over the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
An aide and election official confirmed that the retired general has applied to register a new political party with the electoral authorities in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
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