PESHAWAR – Suspected Taliban suicide bombers have killed at least 40 people at the office compound of a government official in northwest Pakistan, demonstrating the ability of militants to strike high-profile targets in defiance of army offensives.
“There were two bombers,” Amjad Ali Khan, the top government official in Mohmand region, who appeared to be the target of the attack, said yesterday. “They were on foot. The first blew himself up inside the office of one of my deputies while the second one set off explosives when guards caught him.”
Pakistan’s army has said several offensives it has launched since last year have weakened al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban militants.
“Whenever you put pressure on them, they fight back and this phenomenon will not be over in days,” Mehmood Shah, former chief of security in Pakistan’s tribal regions, home to some of the world’s most dangerous militant groups said. “They will strike whenever they will get a chance.”
The dead in the suicide bombings in Mohmand’s main town of Ghalanai included two Pakistani television journalists.
Hospital officials said 60 people were wounded in the attack in Mohmand, one of the lawless ethnic Pashtun tribal regions in Pakistan’s northwest.
Ishtiaq Ahmed, from his hospital bed in the city of Peshawar, said: “I entered the compound. I heard a blast. I fell down, got up and then another explosion happened. People were shouting and some paramilitary soldiers fired in the air. I saw charred bodies.”
Pakistan Taliban spokesman Omar Khalid said the group carried out the attack, saying it was in response to what he said was the Pakistani government’s decision to hand over Arab militants to the United States.
“The blasts destroyed many rooms in the compound and our reports are 40 people were killed and many wounded,” a senior security official in the region said.
When the bombers struck, Mr Khan was holding talks with tribesmen on the need to strengthen militias helping the government fight militants, one of his deputies said.
The Taliban have beheaded pro-government tribal leaders and attacked members of those militias, known as Lashkars, in a bid to tighten their grip on areas of the northwest.
Little government control over the ethnic Pashtun northwest tribal region makes it an ideal spot for militant groups to form alliances, run training grounds and plot attacks.
Their calls for “holy war” can appeal to young men who have yet to see the state deliver schools and jobs in Pakistan, which Washington sees as vital to its battle against an Afghan Taliban insurgency raging in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, said defeating militancy required more than security crackdowns.
“It’s a question of civil institutions, a question of economic growth, a question of making all the elements of society stronger,” he told journalists in Pakistan’s commercial capital, Karachi.
The challenge in the northwest was highlighted by Mr Munter’s predecessor, Anne Patterson, in a 2009 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. She predicted it would take 10 to 15 years to defeat a “witches brew” of militants there. – (Reuters)