Suicide bomber kills 26 in Pakistan

A suicide bomber pretending to need help with his car killed 26 people in north-west Pakistan today, officials said, underscoring concerns that militant violence near the Afghan border could escalate now that Pakistan is shifting troops away from the region toward India.

The explosion at a polling station also wounded 15 people in Buner, a district bordering Swat, a valley where Pakistan’s army has waged a stop-start offensive against insurgents for more than a year, police official Beharmand Khan said. The building targeted was a school, where voters were casting ballots in a by-election for a National Assembly seat.

“The suicide attacker pulled his car outside the polling station, and asked people to push the vehicle, saying that it had broken down. His purpose was to gather the maximum people around the car. The moment people started pushing the car, he blew it up,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister of the North West Frontier Province.

He said the attack was a message to the world that: “It is not possible to hold a peaceful election in this country.”

The bombing followed reports that Pakistan’s army has restricted military leave and was redeploying thousands of troops away from the north-west – where many al-Qaida and Taliban militants are based – toward the eastern border with India amid tensions over last month’s attacks in Mumbai.

India blames Pakistani militants for the slaughter of 164 people in its commercial capital, and it has not ruled out force. But leaders of both nuclear-armed countries insist they want to avoid what would be their fourth war.

Leading Pakistani newspapers warned in editorials today that Pakistan is taking a huge gamble if it lets the deteriorating relations with India distract it from battling militants in the north-west, where it also is engaged in an offensive in the lawless tribal belt.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947 – two over Kashmir, a majority Muslim region in the Himalayas claimed by both countries. But most analysts say another war is unlikely because both countries have too much to lose. Some speculate, however, that the Mumbai attackers sought to distract Pakistan from its troubles along the Afghan frontier.

Pakistan has said it would not launch a first strike, but its troop redeployment was seen as an indication that it will retaliate if India tries to take out militant targets on Pakistani soil.