Northwest Pakistan plunged into mourning yesterday after one of the bloodiest attacks in the nation killed 105 people, eclipsing a peace mission by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The carnage caps a month of escalating bloodshed in the country, where a full security alert was unable to stop a car bomb blowing up a Peshawar market, leveling buildings and slaughtering shoppers.
Many of those killed in the city were women and children, in what has been seen as a calculated attempt to tarnish Clinton’s mission to bolster the government.
There was no claim of responsibility but a barrage of attacks has forced Pakistan to send 30,000 troops into battle against homegrown Taliban fighters who have operated with impunity from South Waziristan, on the Afghan border.
“A total of 105 people have been killed. Seventy-one of them were identified. Thirteen are children and 27 were women,” Dr Zafar Iqbal said at the Lady Reading Hospital. There were 217 registered wounded.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon led international outrage over the “appalling” attack.
At grief-stricken funerals in the city dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, anger mounted at the barbarity of an attack that killed women and children indiscriminately.
“My brother and father had nothing to do with Taliban or the army, so why were they killed? We got their bodies back in pieces. It was almost impossible to recognize them,” a weeping Saddiq Khan said.
Shops and markets closed for three days of mourning and most families shuttered themselves indoors, with schools already closed over security fears.
The blast, the most serious since an attack targeting former prime minister Benazir Bhutto that killed about 140 people in October 2007, underscored the gravity of the extremist threat destabilizing the country.
Clinton, whose three-day visit to Pakistan is designed to fend off fierce criticism of US policies and bolster the government, expressed solidarity and addressed concerns about more militants infiltrating from Afghanistan.
“We’re trying to use new technology and new counterinsurgency methods, along with the Pakistani military, to actually do a better job. And we’re actually putting more troops, not fewer, on the border,” she said in a TV interview.
Clinton’s charm offensive rolled into a wall of suspicion at one of the country’s top universities yesterday as students drilled her on whether the US was truly ready to be a steadfast partner in a time of crisis.
However, she was presented with stark evidence of the “trust deficit” that yawns between the two countries.
“What guarantee can the Americans give Pakistanis that we can now trust you ... and that you guys are not going to be betraying us like you did in the past,” one student asked at a “townhall-style” meeting Clinton held at the Government College University in Lahore.
Clinton repeated her conviction that common interests far outweighed their differences.
“I am well aware that there is a trust deficit,” Clinton said. “My message is that’s not the way it should be. We cannot let a minority of people in both countries determine our relationship.”
She urged young people to stand firm against the forces of religious extremism, saying it threatened everything that both Americans and Pakistanis hold dear.
Some of the toughest questions centered on the Kerry-Lugar bill, a recent piece of US legislation which aims to triple US assistance to Pakistan to some US$7 billion over the next five years, but which contains conditions which many Pakistanis regard as an affront to their sovereignty
“Nobody is saying you must take this money so that we can help you rebuild your energy sector or put more kids in school or provide better maternal and child health,” said Clinton in a hint of growing impatience. “What is regrettable is this misunderstanding, from my perspective ... if Pakistan doesn’t want the money, we’re not going to impose it on you.”
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