Seven killed in bomb blast in Pakistan

Irfan Mughal

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) – Suspected Islamist
militants blew up a police vehicle in northwestern Pakistan on
Sunday, killing seven people, including three policeman and
three paramilitary troops, officials said.

The vehicle was on a routine patrol on the outskirts of the
town of Dera Ismail Khan when the bomb apparently planted in a
dusty road exploded as it passed over.

Dera Ismail Khan is close to the Waziristan tribal region
where security forces have been battling al Qaeda-linked
militants and their local supporters over the past two years.

“It was a remote-controlled bomb,” Daar Ali Khattak,
District Police Officer, told reporters.

Khattak said a passerby was among the dead and hospital
officials said five people were wounded, including two women.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack but Interior
Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said Islamist militants were
likely behind the blast.

A few hours later, a second bomb went off near the site of
the first blast. A wall of a nearby government building
collapsed, but there were no casualties, residents said.

A third bomb went off near a police checkpost in another
part of the town but caused no casualties, police said.

“It appears to be the spillover of what is going on in
Waziristan,” Sherpao told Reuters.

Nearly 200 pro-Taliban militants have been killed in
clashes with security forces in the North Waziristan tribal
region this month. Many al Qaeda fighters and their Taliban
supporters fled to the semi-autonomous tribal belt after U.S.
and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan
in 2001.

“HOT TARGETS”

Pakistani security forces have been trying to clear foreign
militants from the area and subdue their Pakistani allies since
2004.

Khattak said security had been beefed up in Dera Ismail
Khan and nearby Tank town over concerns of militant attacks.
“We consider these towns as hot targets of the militants,” he
said.

Police in Tank last week issued a warning to local
authorities that militants could target government offices,
buildings and vehicles in retaliation for the military’s
crackdown in the tribal areas.

Pakistan’s tribal belt and areas on the Afghan side of the
long border are dominated by ethnic Pashtuns.

Many tribesmen sympathize with the Taliban, also Pashtuns,
and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman
al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the region.

Afghan officials have long complained that militants use
Pakistani territory as a springboard for launching attacks
inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led “war on terrorism,”
says it is doing all it can to stem cross-border movement of
the militants and has urged Afghan authorities to do more on
their side of the porous border.