Bombs kill 24 near Pakistani capital

PAKISTAN: A powerful bomb ripped through a bus believed to be carrying Pakistani nuclear workers on Tuesday and another hit a market minutes later, leaving at least 24 people dead, officials said.

The devastating attacks happened in sensitive areas of the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, which is the the site of the army headquarters and President Pervez Musharraf’s official army residence.

The first explosion hit a bus believed to be carrying employees of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP. The commission was not immediately available for comment.

Fifteen of the workers on the bus were killed and about a dozen wounded, other interior ministry officials said on condition of anonymity.

The white-coloured 40-seater bus was almost completely destroyed by the blast, which could be heard across the city. Rescue workers were cutting open the wreckage to pull out injured people and dead bodies.

“There was a huge bang then I saw the bus in a mangled heap. Body parts were scattered across the road and there was blood everywhere,” witness Mohammad Tahir said.

The second bomb blast happened about three kilometres (two miles) away in the city’s R.A. bazaar, killing at least five people, the interior ministry’s Cheema said.

The attack, initially thought to be a motorcycle bomb, may have targeted another vehicle carrying defence employees, security officials said. It was not clear whether the casualties were civilian or military. “We are investigating what caused the bombings,” Cheema said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either blast.

But a series of deadly attacks have rocked Pakistan since the military’s storming of the hardline Red Mosque in Islamabad in July. More than 100 people were killed in the siege and storming of the pro-Taliban mosque.

Military officials say 60 soldiers and 250 militants have been killed in violence in about six weeks.

A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-filled car into a paramilitary vehicle in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajaur on Saturday, killing three soldiers and two civilians, officials said.

The situation is also tense after the breakdown of a controversial peace deal between the government and Islamic pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan’s troubled tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

The army is still trying to secure the safety of more than 150 soldiers whom militants say they abducted late last week in the tribal area of South Waziristan.

The military insists the troops were “trapped” amid a dispute between the rebels and local tribesmen, but the insurgents say they will not be freed until Pakistan pulls all soldiers from the area.

Pakistan sent troops into the tribal zone to track down Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels who fled the fall of the hardline Taliban regime after the US-led military response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. US officials have said that Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network has regrouped in Pakistan’s tribal belt to plot attacks on international targets.

Islamabad, Tuesday, AFP