A SUICIDE truck bomb struck Pakistan’s main intelligence agency in the northwest of the country yesterday morning, killing at least 10 people and signalling a fresh escalation in the war between security services and Taliban militants.
The blast ripped through an office belonging to the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in Peshawar, destroying much of the three-storey building as well as vehicles outside. At least 60 people were injured.
The bomber was driving a pick-up truck of the kind which usually delivers medical supplies, an unnamed soldier said: “All of a sudden, it appeared on the wrong side of the road and began coming towards the office. The guards opened fire but it came to the entrance of the building as the firing went on and exploded.”
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North West Frontier province, said: “This is a guerrilla war. We will continue our action against these militant terrorists. That is the only way we can survive.”
It was the latest in a barrage of near-daily attacks in the provincial capital, close to South Waziristan where fighting between the army and Taliban fighters is continuing. A blast in a market last month killed more than 100 people, many of them women and children.
In hitting the ISI, the militants have renewed their focus on sensitive targets. An ISI office in Lahore was hit earlier this year, while last month militants laid siege to the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. A few years ago, such targets were considered unthinkable.
While the ISI has co-operated closely with UK and US intelligence services since 2001, western officials and analysts say the agency has maintained its links with certain militant outfits.
Military strategists consider that selected groups – sometimes referred to as the “good Taliban” – can be useful in securing Pakistani interests in Afghanistan or Kashmir. But the argument has become clouded by an unrelenting chain of militant attacks.
Peshawar residents reported a loud boom in one of the city’s most guarded districts, on a road leading to Afghanistan. Hours later, a second blast exploded near Bannu, a town in the “settled” districts near Waziristan, killing eight people. Heavy fighting continues in South Waziristan, where thousands of army soldiers are pressing a month-old offensive on the Taliban’s mountain stronghold. Pakistani media reported that 17 soldiers were killed in fighting, the highest daily toll for the army, which claims to have killed more than 500 militants.
The violence coincides with a visit to Pakistan by US national security adviser James Jones. – (Reuters/ Guardianservice)