Seven killed in two suicide attacks in northwest Pakistan
Staff shift an injured security officer to emergency ward at a hospital in Peshawar. (AP Photo) Staff shift an injured security officer to emergency ward at a hospital in Peshawar. (AP Photo)
At least seven people were killed and several others, including judges, injured on Wednesday in two separate suicide attacks in Pakistan’s restive northwestern region, days after a bombing claimed 13 lives in Lahore. In the first attack, at least six persons, including four security persons, were killed when two Taliban suicide bombers attacked a government compound in Mohmand tribal region.
The explosion took place at the headquarters in Ghalanai when two suicide bombers tried to enter the colony and when signalled for stopping — one of them blew himself up while the other was killed by firing of security forces, the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) said. “Security agencies had the intelligence about intrusion of suicide bombers from Afghanistan inside Mohmand agency,” the ISPR said.
The Pakistani Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed the attack, media reports said. The security personnel and two civilians, including a school teacher were killed in the blast. At least eight others were wounded in the attack and three critically injured were shifted to Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, Dawn reported.
In another attack, a driver was killed while four judges, including three women, were injured when a motorcyle-borne suicide bomber struck an official vehicle. The blast occurred in Hayatabad area of Peshawar, police said.
The incident comes barely two days after a suicide blast claimed by the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the banned Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) ripped through the camp of protesting chemists in front of the Punjab Assembly in Lahore, that killed 13 people.
In September last year, a suicide bomber targeted a mosque in Mohmand Agency’s Anbar tehsil during Friday prayers, leaving 36 people dead. That attack too was claimed by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.
Mohmand is one of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal districts near the Afghan border, where the military has been battling al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants for over a decade.