Soldiers gather at the site of the bomb blast in Peshawar, yesterday.
PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber yesterday targeted a senior Pakistani police commander, killing 12 people, including two women, near the US consulate in Peshawar, officials said.
It was the latest in a string of attacks as the country prepares to hold historic election on May 11. The vote will mark the first democratic transition of power in Pakistan, which has been governed by four military rulers.
A security official said Abdul Majeed Marwat, Commander of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, survived the attack and was taken to a military hospital with “only scratches”.
Some 28 others were wounded, medics said.
“It was a suicide attack, the target was the FC commander,” police official Arshad Khan said.
The bomber used some 18kg of explosives. He was on foot and struck when Marwat’s convoy stopped at a military check-post on Fakhr-e-Alam Road in Saddar Cantonment.
The check-post is about 300 metres from the heavily guarded US consulate, the target of attacks in the past.
“We have received six bodies, including of two women,” Sayed Jameel Shah, a spokesman for Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, said. He later confirmed two of the injured had died. “They were in serious condition in the neurosurgery ward.”
Another four bodies and 17 wounded were taken to the Combined Military Hospital.
Among the dead were two soldiers and a member of the Frontier Constabulary, while the wounded included civilians and military personnel.
The blast damaged two motorcycles and four cars, including Marwat’s vehicle. Splashes of blood lay on the ground and a pair of legs, presumed to be that of the bomber, were seen.
Umar Din, 21, a rickshaw driver, said the force of the explosion flipped his rickshaw onto the ground.
“I came out and saw my passenger bleeding. I picked him up on my shoulder and ran to a safer place. It was horrible, people were bleeding and crying.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but police, soldiers and paramilitary units are frequently targeted by Pakistan Taliban.
There are fears that insecurity could prove a major challenge for the election, not least in Peshawar, a key electoral battleground and home to 2.5 million, on the edge of the tribal belt, a Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold. Agencies
