Suicide bombers kill 50 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A pair of suicide bombers attacked a large gathering of anti-Taliban elders inside a government compound in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 50 people in one of the worst terror strikes to hit the country’s volatile tribal belt this year.

The attack occurred in the town of Ghalanai at the
administrative headquarters of Mohmand, a region along the Afghan
border that continues to see periodic clashes between Taliban militants
and Pakistani troops. A meeting was underway at the compound between
leaders of a local anti-Taliban militia and a top Mohmand official,
authorities said.

Witnesses said more than 300 people were inside the
building when the two attackers appeared. One of the bombers was
dressed in a police uniform and was able to walk into the offices where
the crowd had gathered. A second bomber was stopped at a perimeter
security gate. Both men detonated their explosives seconds apart.

One witness said he was waiting inside the building
to meet a local official when “suddenly there was a huge blast. I fell
on the ground. When I stood up, there was another blast. As I again
fell to the ground, I saw people running in panic.”

Pakistani television showed a long line of wounded people in bloodied tunics on stretchers being rushed into a hospital in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan’s
largest city. More than 120 people were injured in the attack.
Officials in Mohmand said the compound had metal detectors at its
entrance but that they were not functioning at the time because of a
power outage. Television footage showed sections of the compound
reduced to rubble.

Anti-Taliban tribal meetings and pro-government tribal militias have been frequent targets of insurgents in recent years. On Jan. 1, a man driving a pickup filled with explosives set off a blast near the town of Lakki Marwat, where members of an anti-Taliban tribal militia were playing volleyball. At least 75 people were killed.

In July, two suicide bomb blasts tore through a busy
market in the village of Yaka Ghund in Mohmand, killing at least 65
people in an attack that authorities said appeared to be aimed at
members of a local anti-Taliban militia who had been meeting in the
area.

Mohmand is one of several tribal regions along the
Afghan border where Taliban and al-Qaeda militants maintain hideouts.
The Pakistani military has launched offensives in several parts of
northwest Pakistan — including the Swat Valley, South Waziristan,
Bajaur, Orakzai and Khyber — in hopes of ending the wave of
Taliban-engineered suicide bomb attacks and other terror acts that have
ravaged the country in recent years.

Despite the offensives, the insurgency’s top leaders
remain active. Many militants were able to flee the military operations
well in advance and find sanctuary elsewhere in the tribal belt.

The border between Afghanistan and Mohmand, as well as other regions in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt, are poorly guarded and extremely porous, making it easy for militants to escape and return. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of northwest Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, said regional militancy can be defeated only if Pakistan
better coordinates its counter-terrorism efforts with U.S. and Afghan
forces battling insurgents on the Afghan side of the border.

“There is a need for an organized and comprehensive strategy in the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan, the tribal areas and Pakistan,”
Hussain said. “Otherwise we will keep suffering. There are predictions
that this wave of terrorism may continue for the next 14 years. God
knows what will happen if terror keeps hitting us for 14 more years.”

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