Teenage suicide bombers wreak havoc
In the first incident yesterday, a remote-controlled bomb exploded in Peshawar’s Lahori Gate area as a police truck carrying constables about to start their shift drove by. Four police officers and a boy passing by were killed, while 22 people were wounded.
An hour later, two women approached police guarding the area. One of the females threw a grenade, then was able to partially detonate her suicide vest, said Shafqat Malik, a police officer with the bomb disposal unit. She appeared to be 16 or 17 years old, he said.
“I thought the girl was pregnant as she was walking slowly with another woman. As I tried to push people away, suddenly a blast took place,” said police officer Himayat Ullah.
Compared to other periods over the last four years, Pakistan has seen few large militant attacks over the last two months. Even with this lull, however, no one has suggested that the country’s stretched and poorly-trained security forces were making progress in the fight.
Most of the militants are based in the northwest close to Afghanistan, and Peshawar has been frequently hit.
The tactics deployed in the attack — deploying a female bomber to the scene of an earlier blast to target officers there — showed a degree of sophistication, but were not unprecedented.
In June, militants said they had sent a husband and wife suicide squad to a police station in another northwestern town, killing 10. Last year, a female suicide bomber attacked a World Food Program distribution centre, killing 45.
Meanwhile, a key suspect in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people was escorted home to Indonesia under tight security to stand trial yesterday six months after he was captured in the same northwestern Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was killed.
Umar Patek, an al-Qaida-linked Indonesian militant, had a $1 million bounty on his head when authorities caught him.
