Suicide bombers armed with guns and grenades attacked a Pakistani police station yesterday, killing four officers in the second attack in as many days in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The three attackers first opened fire with Kalashnikovs, then used hand grenades to blow their way into the building before detonating their suicide vests, senior police official Yameen Khan said.
He said the station was targeted because it housed a large number of officers in downtown Peshawar, which runs into Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, a hotbed of Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants targeted by US drone strikes.
Pieces of human flesh and body parts, including the head of one of the suicide bombers, were scattered inside the police station, along with broken windows and chairs, a reporter said.
“Four policemen have been killed and four others were wounded,” Khan said.
“The attackers wanted to kill the maximum number of policemen, that is why they selected this station. About 200 policemen reside here,” Khan said.
The attack came a day after a car bomb ripped through a bus -station on the outskirts of Peshawar, killing 13 people, including two children, raising concerns about a new wave of violence in the city of 2.5 million.
More than 530 bomb attacks have killed around 4,900 people across Pakistan since government troops in July 2007 stormed a mosque in Islamabad where Islamist extremists were holed up, provoking a local Taliban-led insurgency.
However, there was a decline in attacks in the second half of last year, with at least some -commanders in Pakistan’s nebulous Taliban movement abiding by a ceasefire.
The bombers struck at about 7:15am when local residents in the congested Kotwali area were leaving home for work and school.
“The attackers first started firing on the gate of the police station and then used the hand grenades. Later they entered inside the police station, senior police official Imtiaz Khan said.
Witnesses said the attack happened as policemen came off the night shift.
“We were just trying to sleep after we finished night duty when we heard the blast,” said police constable Sayed Ali, who lives at the station.
“We ran out of the building from the back door and then there were three blasts,” he added.
Officials said that 15kg to 18kg of high quality explosives were stuffed into the suicide vests, along with steel plates and ball bearings.
The suicide bombers were aged between 18 and 22 years, Peshwar bomb disposal squad head Shafqat Malik said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not