PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber targeting police killed at least 10 people in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, including the son and nephew of an Afghan official involved in peace negotiations with the Taliban, authorities said.
The bomber was riding a motorcycle and detonated his explosives as the police patrol drove by in Peshawar, said city police chief Liaqat Ali Khan.
The two Afghans who were killed, Qazi Mohammad Hilal Waqad and Mohammad Idrees, were working at their country’s consulate in Peshawar, said Afghan Consul General Syed Mohammad Ibrahim Khel in Peshawar.
However, it did not appear they were the targets of the attack, Khel said.
Waqad’s father, Qazi Amin Waqad, is a member of the Afghan High Peace Council, said an official at the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad, Shakir Qarar. The council was appointed by the Afghan government to hold peace talks with the Taliban to end the 11-year-old war in neighbouring Afghanistan. The peace council member was in Afghanistan when the attack occurred, and Waqad and Idrees were driving to work at the time, Qarar added.
The blast killed 10 people and wounded 42, said Khan, the Peshawar police chief. Three policemen were among the wounded. Many of the dead and wounded were on a nearby passenger bus, which bore the brunt of the explosion, said Khan.
Local TV footage showed the wreckage of the bus and the motorcycle, as rescue workers rushed wounded people to hospitals in the city.
No one immediately claimed responsibility.
The Pakistani Taliban has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for years and has stepped up attacks ahead of next month’s parliamentary election.
Also yesterday, two gunmen riding a motorcycle attacked a campaign office of an anti-Taliban political party in northwestern Pakistan, killing a worker there, police chief Khan said. The Awami National Party office is in the city of Nowshera.
Elsewhere in the northwest, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a vehicle carrying Awami National Party candidate, Mohammad Ahmed Khan, in Charsadda district, said local police chief Ghulam Hussain. Khan was not hurt, but one person was killed and nine were wounded.
The Taliban have specifically targeted secular political parties that have supported military offensives against the militants in the northwest. The Taliban have largely spared Islamic parties and others who believe the government should strike a peace deal with the militants, rather than fight them.
“Unless the government, the country’s independent election commission and security forces ensure that all parties can campaign freely without fear, the election may be severely compromised,” Ali Dayan Hasan, the head of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, said in a statement issued Monday.
Bashir Jan, a senior member of the Awami National Party who survived a recent bomb attack in the southern city of Karachi, also criticized the government for not doing enough to protect candidates, but he said they were determined to carry on.
AP
