Suicide Bombers (page 2)

A total of four attacks, which included a suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol, marked the third time since August that government buildings were targeted with multiple blasts that caused massive bloodshed.

The core of the attacks hit central Baghdad with three car bombs exploding in the span of a few minutes. The attacks were directed at Iraqi authorities: the targets were the labour ministry building, a court complex near the Iraqi- protected Green Zone and near the new site of the finance ministry after its previous building was destroyed in major attacks in August.

An official for Iraq's interior ministry said at least 99 people were killed in those three car bombs and at least 192 injured.

About an hour before the Baghdad blasts, a suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in the Sunni- dominated district of Dora in southern Baghdad, killing at least three policemen and one civilian and wounding five persons, a police officer said.

Iraqi police said at least one of the Baghdad blasts was a suicide bomber -- driving a bomb- rigged ambulance heading for the finance ministry. The other two explosions may have been car- rigged bombs detonated by timer or trigger.

" What crime have we committed? Children and women were buried under debris. Why did they ( Iraqi troops) let this car bomb pass!" cried Ahmed Jabbar as he staggered through the debris near the new finance ministry building. The blast tore through a nearby market and toppled at least one building nearby. Rescue teams -- some using construction cranes -- tried to clear the rubble to look for survivors.

The breakdown of casualties among the sites was not immediately clear, but the most serious bloodshed had been reported outside the finance ministry building and the court complex.

Rescue workers climbed through twisted steel bars and crushed concrete at the court building. Dozens of cars and trucks were burnt and crushed. Firefighters pulled out survivors from behind huge slabs of toppled concrete.

Militants are said to have killed at least 35 people, including 17 children, at a mosque near the Pakistani army's headquarters in Rawalpindi.

At least four attackers opened fire on worshippers during Friday prayers attended by many military staff in the garrison city.

Security forces fought back in an hour-long gun battle before three attackers blew themselves up, reports say.

The Pakistan Taliban later said they had carried out the strike.

Ten adult civilians were also among the dead, as well as military staff, the army said.

The Pakistani security forces have been attacked recently, and this attack has shown that the militants can still penetrate supposedly secure areas, says the BBC's Orla Guerin in Islamabad.

One witness told Pakistan's Dawn TV: "They attacked the mosque from the side ... the windows. They took the people, got hold of their hair, shot them.

Military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas said the latest attack had been co-ordinated. It ended once the military had made sure all the gunmen were dead, AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

Revenge motive?

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said explosions from at least one suicide bomber caused the roof of the building to collapse.

"They are taking revenge for the Pakistan army's successful operations in the Swat and Waziristan region," Mr Malik told the ARY television channel.

One witness, Nasir Ali Sheikh, told the BBC he had seen three attackers, one of whom threw hand grenades into the mosque.

He said two grenades had landed in the men's section of the mosque and one in the women's.

Other attackers were firing randomly in the Parade Lane mosque, said Nasir Ali Sheikh, adding that visitors had had to go through tight security, including metal detectors, to get inside the building.

"As soon as we finished prayers, I heard a blast and firing," witness Bakhtawar Hussain told Reuters.

He said he had seen wounded people lying in the courtyard of the mosque.

Police cordoned off the area around the mosque.

The mosque is a short distance from the army headquarters, in an area housing several offices of the defence establishment and the intelligence agencies.

Nineteen people were killed in an army base attack in Rawalpindi in October.

There has been a pattern of militant groups trying to attack security targets inside Pakistan recently as the army pursues an offensive against militants in South Waziristan.

A spokeswoman for the rescue services says another 32 were wounded in the attack.

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle ripped through workers queuing for their salaries nearthe four-star Shalimar Hotel, killing 20 people as the United Nations pulled expatriate staff from the country's north-west.

''We were sitting on the second floor of our office. It was a huge blast,'' Raja Sher Ali, a marketing manager in a local company, said.

''Our building shook as if in an earthquake and when we came out there was smoke everywhere and body parts were thrown into our office.''

A surge in militant attacks left more than 300 people dead last month as the military pressed its offensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan movement in the tribal belt, where there are many al-Qaeda-linked operatives.

A senior police official said the suicide bomber drove a motorcycle towards the queue of people waiting for their salaries when he blew up.

Source: www.theage.com Suicide bike bomber kills workers

The twin blows to Pakistan eclipsed the military's announcement that troops had captured a key Taliban- held town as it stepped up a major offensive in the tribal belt and offered $ 5 million ( Rs 41 crore) for Taliban chiefs dead or alive.

Image From : Times Of India

Monday's attack, near army headquarters in Rawalpindi, turned another routine day into bloodshed for the second time in less than a week -- showing the enormity of the threat that al- Qaeda- linked militants pose in Pakistan.

The blast showered the area with pieces of flesh, smeared blood on the ground and shattered the windows of a multistorey block housing the bank and four- star Shalimar Hotel.

" Our building shook as if in an earthquake and when we came out, there was smoke everywhere and body parts were strewn in our office," said Raja Sher Ali, a marketing manager in a local company.

A senior police officer said the latest attack was the work of a suicide bomber, although rescue workers said the cause of the blast was still unclear.

The suicide bomber came on a motorcycle and blew up close to people gathered to collect their salaries. " We found parts of a suicide vest and some body parts of the suicide attacker," said senior police officer Aslam Tarin.

" Thirty- five people were killed and more than 60 were wounded," said information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira.

Four security personnel were among the dead and nine others wounded, the military said.

The attack took place near the upmarket Pearl Continental Hotel and Pakistan's army headquarters, where 10 gunmen kept up a nearly 24- hour siege last month that left 23 people dead and deeply embarrassed the military.

The plummeting security situation saw the UN announce on Monday it was pulling out international staff from northwest Pakistan, days after at least 118 people were slaughtered in a car bomb in its local capital Peshawar. " They will be relocated immediately," Ishrat Rizvi, a UN spokesperson said of the international workers in the area.

UN secretary general Ban Kimoon raised the security level to phase four in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which US officials say are hotbeds of militancy. " The decision has been taken bearing in mind the intense security situation in the region," the statement reads.

TWIN ASSAULT IN LAHORE
Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a police checkpoint near bus terminals at the entrance to Lahore late on Monday, wounding seven people, a senior police officer said. The only casualties were the two bombers.

They struck after dark in the congested area on a link road to Pakistan's intercity motorway that dissects the country from the northwestern city of Peshawar to the capital Islamabad and east to Lahore.

" A car was stopped at the checkpost and the two suicide bombers in the car exploded themselves. We have found legs and a head," city police chief Pervez Rathor told reporters.

One warden and two constables were critically wounded and four civilians are also injured. " Bomb disposal staff are defusing remaining explosives in the car. Thank god no one died," Rathor added.

Geo TV showed security officers inspecting a small mangled car in front of a truck and a few other vehicles on a wide road where low concrete blast barriers were visible in front of the damaged car. There were small pieces of debris scattered across the road.

A surge in violence left more than 300 people dead last month as Pakistan presses a major offensive against the Tehreek- e- Taliban Pakistan in the tribal belt, where US officials say al- Qaeda are plotting attacks on the West.

Two suicide car bombs exploded in downtown Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 136 people and delivering a powerful blow to the heart of the fragile city's government in the worst attack of the year, officials said.

 Black smoke could be seen billowing from the frantic scene, as emergency service vehicles sped to the area. Even civilian cars were being commandeered to transport the wounded to hospitals.

"The walls collapsed and we had to run out,'' said Yasmeen Afdhal, 24, an employee of the Baghdad provincial administration, which was targeted by one of the car bombs. "There are many wounded, and I saw them being taken away. They were pulling victims out of the rubble, and rushing them to ambulances".

The car bombs, which targeted the justice ministry and the Baghdad provincial administration, come as Iraq is preparing for elections scheduled this January.

 There have been no claims of responsibility so far, but massive car bombs have been the hallmark of the Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow the country's Shia-dominated government. At least 25 members of the Baghdad Provincial Council, which runs the city, were killed in the blast.

 The area where the blasts occurred is just a few hundred yards from the Green Zone that houses the US embassy as well as the PM's offices. The street where the blasts occurred had just been reopened to vehicle traffic a few months ago, in what was supposed to be a sign that safety was returning to the once devastated city.

The explosive-laden vehicles were sitting in parking garages next to the two government building, police said. "This is a political struggle, the price of which we are paying,'' said provincial council member Mohammed al-Rubaiey. "Every politician is responsible and even the government is responsible, as well as security leaders.''

The bombers forced their way into the university campus. While one suicide bomber blew himself up near the cafeteria in the girls' section, another blast occurred in the Shariah faculty in the boys' block.

Two female students were killed and about five injured in the girls' section and another four in the boys' block. Officials gave conflicting accounts of the blasts and casualties. But city police chief Tahir Alam said: "Both were suicide blasts."

According to initial information, two girl students have been killed," interior minister Rehman Malik said. Malik was booed and forced to return from the university with students shouting "shame, shame" while some even threw stones on his bulletproof car.

They blamed the minister for failure to ensure full security of the city and demanded his resignation.

"There was a big bang that damaged the building severely," university student Aleemullah said. Thirteen injured, 11 female students and two men, have been shifted to PIMS hospital where four are said to be in critical condition.

A suicide bomber killed seven commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and up to 42 other people on Sunday in an attack that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged had been plotted from neighbouring Pakistan.

The attack took place in the city of Pisheen near the border with Pakistan in restive SistanBaluchestan province, which hosts a substantial Sunni population, local news agencies said.

Iran's parliament speaker said the United States was behind the attack while the Guards accused Western powers of carrying out the assault, the deadliest against them since a bombing in February 2007 in the same province killed 13 people.

"Based on the latest information... between 30 to 35 people, including military officers, tribal leaders and local citizens, have been martyred in the attack," Mohammad Marziah, chief prosecutor in the SistanBaluchestan provincial capital Zahedan, was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.

Marziah said Abdolmalek Rigi, leader of the shadowy Jundallah (Soldiers of God) Sunni group, had claimed responsibility for the attack.

"So far no one has been arrested, but terrorist Malek Rigi has accepted the responsibility for this terrorist attack," Marziah said. Iran's state broadcaster said the attack occurred in front of a local gymnasium in Pisheen.
Fars news agency said the bomber struck when Guard officers were meeting local leaders of the Shiite and Sunni communities. Some local tribal chiefs were among the dead, media reports said.

The official IRNA news agency said the suicide bomber "wearing an explosives vest blew himself up inside the meeting."

"The goal of the terrorists is to disturb the security of the Sistan-Baluchestan province," Speaker Ali Larijani said.

"It shows they do not want to have economic progress in this region. But certainly the Guards will act with more force to establish security in

The strikes come just days after the attempt by terrorists to storm the Pakistan army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi in which nine attackers and 14 security personnel and civilian employees of the armed forces were killed.

On Thursday, terrorists first struck in Kohat, a garrison city to the southeast of Peshawar. A lone suicide- bomber hit the boundary wall of a police station there with his explosive- laden van, resulting in the death of 13 people, including three policemen.

The incident took place at 8 am and the blast, caused by 100 kg of explosives, was so huge that " it turned half of the building of the police station into rubble," said a local journalist, who arrived at the scene within 15 minutes of the explosion.

One- and- a- half hours later, Lahore -- the capital of the Punjab province and the second largest city in Pakistan -- came under triple attack by nine terrorists who, firing indiscriminately and lobbing handgrenades, barged into three separate facilities being used by security agencies.

One of these was the provincial headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency ( FIA), the federal police that deals with terrorism. The second was the police training academy at Manawan and the third the Elite Police Training School on Bedian Road on the outskirts of the city.

Source: Mail Today Pakistan Reels Under Terror Blitz

An injured man was brought to a hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Monday after a suicide bombing.

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.

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.

Click Here To Watch Video:-

Taliban Attacks in Pakistan on the Rise: -Video
The fourth attack in a week show how the militants could still shake the country with serious terror attacks in a short period over a wide geographic spread.Source: NY Times

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.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

Source: New York Times Car Bomb Kills at Least 41 in Restive Region of Pakistan

A man carries an injured woman after a suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan Friday, Oct. 9, 2009

The attack, which wounded more than 100 people in Peshawar, was Pakistan's deadliest in six months and was a reminder of the ability of insurgents to strike in major cities despite operations against them and the death of their leader in a U.S. missile strike.

The blast left a charred skeleton of a bus flipped on its side in the middle of the road, with the twisted remains of a motorbike nearby. Passers-by rushed to cover the bodies of victims whose clothes were burned off, while a man carried an injured woman. One man staggered from the scene, his face covered with blood.

People rush to the site of a suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan on Friday, Oct. 9, 2009

"I saw a blood-soaked leg landing close to me," said Noor Alam, who suffered wounds to his legs and face and was at a hospital overrun with casualties. "I understood for the first time in my life what doomsday would look like."

Peshawar Police Chief Liaqat Ali Khan said the attacker was in a car packed with a "huge" amount explosives and artillery rounds. There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing, the target of which was not immediately apparent. Militants typically attack government, military or Western targets, but blasts have taken place in public places before.

People help an injured person out of the bombing site in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009

Zafar Iqbal, a doctor at the main Peshawar hospital, said 49 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Seven children were among the dead.
"Death has to come one day, but we will keep chasing these terrorists, and this attack cannot deter our resolve," Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said as he visited the scene.

The United States is pushing Pakistan to take action against insurgents using its soil to fuel the insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan. The army has carried out some offensives in the northwest this year, killing many militants and earning it measured praise in the West, but the insurgents have responded with scores of suicide attacks.

The army has confirmed it is prepared to launch a major offensive in South Waziristan, a region along the Afghan border consider the fountainhead of suicide attacks and other militant activity in Pakistan. It has not given a date for the launch.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the attack meant the country now "had no other option but to carry out an operation in South Waziristan."

People rush to the site of a suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan on Friday, Oct. 9, 2009.

"We will have to proceed," he told a local television station. "All roads are leading to South Waziristan."

The bombing came just days after a Taliban suicide attacker evaded tight security to kill five people at the office of the U.N.'s World Food Program in the capital, Islamabad and two weeks after another explosion killed 11 in another part of Peshawar.
Malik said authorities had arrested a man alleged to have been the "handler" of the U.N. bomber. He gave no more details.

People help an injured person at a bombing site in Peshawar, Pakistan Friday, Oct. 9, 2009.

Also Friday, militants ambushed a tanker carrying fuel for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan at a gas station near Peshawar, torching it, said Fazal Rabi, a police official. No deaths or injuries were reported in the attack, which highlighted the vulnerability of the American-led mission in landlocked Afghanistan as Washington debates sending more troops.

Pakistani Taliban have often targeted U.S. and NATO supply convoys passing through northwest Pakistan for Afghanistan, though there have been less attacks reported recently. Most of the nonmilitary supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan are unloaded at Karachi sea port and are then trucked in through the northwest.

Pakistan's army has launched three operations in South Wazirstan since 2001 but each time has been forced to abandon the push amid fierce resistance. U.S. missile strikes and Pakistani mortar and jet bombings have hit targets there over the last year, but no ground operations have been launched.
One such U.S. attack in the region in August killed Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud. The group has since named a new leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. He has threatened suicide attacks and said his men were preparing to repel any push into South Waziristan.

Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad and Asif Shahzad contributed to this report from Islamabad.s