Car Bomb Kills at Least 41 in Restive Region of Pakistan

Car Bomb Kills at Least 41 in Restive Region of Pakistan
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and JANE PERLEZ
Copyright by Reuters
Published: October 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/world/asia/13pstan.html?th&emc=th


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Militants on Monday launched their fourth assault in a week on strategic targets across Pakistan, this time with a suicide car bombing against a military vehicle in a crowded market in the northwest, killing 41 people and wounding dozens more.

A bomber on Monday attacked a military vehicle in a market in Pakistan’s Shangla District.

The bombing took place in the Shangla District, an area within the Swat Valley but under separate administration. The Pakistani military had declared the valley cleared of militants after an offensive this summer and announced that the Taliban were a shattered force.

Since the Swat campaign and the death of the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in an American drone strike in August, the militants have been relatively quiet. But the attack on Monday showed they could still shake the country with serious terrorist attacks in a short period over a wide geographic spread.

It was the latest in a series clearly intended to prove the Taliban’s resilience, to exact revenge for government and American strikes, and to discourage the Pakistani military from expanding its campaign into South Waziristan, the heartland of the Taliban in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Air Force has been pounding areas of South Waziristan in the last day, a prelude to a possible ground campaign, military officials said. Hundreds are reported to have fled in recent days in expectation of an attack.

On Saturday, in one of their boldest gambits, 10 militants dressed in army fatigues and armed with automatic weapons, mines, grenades and suicide jackets breached the perimeter of the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in a raid that left 23 people dead and set off a 20-hour siege.

The standoff ended Sunday morning with the rescue of 39 hostages by army commandos, but showed that even a building of the intelligence wing of the army was vulnerable to Taliban attacks. On Monday, the Pakistani Army announced that it had a telephone intercept showing that the Tehrik-e-Taliban, the umbrella organization of the Pakistani Taliban, was responsible for the assault.

The group’s deputy, Wali ur-Rehman, was heard telling a colleague by phone after the raid had begun to pray for the success of the operation, the army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said at a news conference.

A Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, told The Associated Press on Monday that the Rawalpindi assault was to avenge Mr. Mehsud’s death. “This was our first small effort and a present to the Pakistani and American governments,” he said.

He said that the raid had been carried out by a Punjabi faction and that the Taliban had given orders to other branches in Sindh, Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province to carry out similar operations.

The sole surviving Taliban gunman was captured by the military and identified as Muhammad Aqeel, also known as Dr. Usman, because he had once worked with the Army Medical Corps.

Mr. Aqeel was in serious condition and unconscious from wounds suffered when he tried to blow himself up, the military spokesman said. He is a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Punjabi militant group affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, General Abbas said.

A senior police officer in Punjab said Mr. Aqeel led the commando operation against the Sri Lankan cricket team during its visit to Lahore in March, and military officials said he was behind a suicide bombing that killed the army surgeon general in 2008. On Friday, in the busiest bazaar in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, militants set off a car bomb that killed 48 people. Last Monday, five people were killed when a suicide bomber dressed in military fatigues walked through the security cordon at the World Food Program offices of the United Nations in Islamabad.

The attack in Shangla on Monday was clearly aimed to shake the confidence of the underfinanced local government and the people who returned to their homes only two months ago after the military operation in Swat.

Among the dead were six soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel, who were part of a quick response force and four newly recruited members of a community police force, a local police official said. Last month, the Taliban sent a suicide bomber to a police training center in the Swat capital, Mingora, resulting in the deaths of 16 new policemen.

One Pakistan general angrily denounced Monday’s bombing as “a diversionary tactic” that would not dissuade the Pakistani military from carrying out an expected offensive in South Waziristan. But the officer conceded that there was no “foolproof antidote” to stop suicide bombers, and acknowledged that the militants could conduct such attacks at will.

The officer said the bombing in the crowded market in Shangla District on Monday, as well as the bombing on Friday in Peshawar, could backfire against the militants, and present the Pakistani military and civilian government with a chance to tap into public anger over civilian deaths.

“There is opportunity in calamity, and we need to be able to capitalize on the public anger over the death of innocent civilians,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak openly about the attacks.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.