A suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed into a Pakistan Air Force bus yesterday, killing at least eight men and wounding about 40, officials said.
The assailant struck around 7am near an air base in Sargodha, about 200km south of Islamabad, air force spokesman Sarfraz Ahmed said. All the dead were air force employees, said Sahid Malik, an official at the hospital treating the victims.
Army spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad called it "an act of terrorism."
PHOTO: AP
Pakistan has been rocked by a string of suicide bombings in recent weeks, deepening political turmoil ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether President Pervez Musharraf's Oct. 6 presidential victory was constitutional. There are fears he could impose a state of emergency if judges rule against him, jeopardizing the country's transition to civilian rule.
Earlier this week a bomber blew himself up near Musharraf's army office in Rawalpindi, a garrison city just south of the capital, killing seven.
There have been no claims of responsibility for the recent attacks, but most have been blamed on Islamic extremists, who also have engaged in deadly clashes with the military in the volatile northwest.
Elsewhere, security forces were struggling to contain militants directly challenging the state's authority and pushing for the imposition of Taliban-style strictures on society.
Security forces backed by gunship helicopters killed up to 70 militants in two days of clashes in troubled Swat Valley, the army said yesterday quoting police and paramilitary sources.
An army helicopter attacked militants on Wednesday in the Sambad area of the mountainous region 130km northwest of Islamabad after it came under fire. Eighteen militants were killed, including Commander Tariq, an aide to the hard-line cleric, Maulana Fazlullah, provincial home secretary Badshah Gul Wazir said.
Early yesterday, militants attacked hilltop positions of security forces in the Khwaza Khela area, triggering a gunbattle, said Ali Rahman, a local police official, adding that troops backed by helicopter gunships and artillery continued targeting militant facilities, killing at least five people.
The security forces suffered no casualties, he said.
In other developments, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto left for Dubai yesterday, officials said, in a surprise move after canceling the trip overnight due to rumors of an impending state of emergency.
"I am going to Dubai to see my children and ailing mother," Bhutto was quoted as telling members of her Pakistan People's Party at Karachi airport by senior party official Agha Siraj Durrani.
"I will return to Pakistan on November 8," Durrani quoted her saying.
She is due to give a speech in Rawalpindi the following day, Durrani said.
Bhutto said on Wednesday she had decided to postpone her visit "due to rumors of the possible imposition of an emergency in view of the pending cases before the Supreme Court about General Musharraf's elections."
The US and Britain have been quietly pushing a scenario which would see Musharraf as a civilian president and Bhutto serving a third time as prime minister after general elections in January.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS