ISLAMABAD – A suicide bomber blew himself up in an SUV at a volleyball game in northwest Pakistan yesterday, killing 88 people in a village that opposes al-Qaeda-linked Taliban insurgents, police said.
The bomber struck as young men played volleyball in front of a crowd of spectators, including elderly residents and children, near the town of Lakki Marwat, according to officials.
The bloodshed will put Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari’s efforts to fight the Taliban under greater scrutiny, pressure he does not need at a time when corruption cases against his allies could be revived.
“It’s just a disaster. I can see flesh, bodies and wounded all around,” said witness Fazl-e- Akbar. “It’s dark. Vehicles’ headlights are being used to search for victims.”
Local police chief Ayub Khan said the bomber blew himself up in his sports utility vehicle in the middle of the field. A second vehicle was believed to have fled the scene. “We have removed all bodies and wounded from the rubble and now the total death toll is 75, while 42 were wounded,” he said.
It was one of the bloodiest bombings in US ally Pakistan since the October 2007 attack that killed at least 139 people when former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Mr Zardari’s wife, returned home from self-imposed exile.
An attack on a sporting event is highly unusual, but could be part of the militants’ strategy of bombing crowded areas such as markets to inflict mass casualties and spread fear and chaos.
Police said the village had formed an armed anti-Taliban militia, a phenomenon that began in Pakistan last year.
Despite major military offensives against their strongholds, the Taliban have killed hundreds of people in bombings.
In a sign of growing security fears, the United Nations is to withdraw some of its staff from Pakistan because of safety concerns, a UN spokeswoman said on Thursday.
North West Frontier province’s information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said: “We have got to be on the offensive and launch precise strikes on [militant] training centres and hideouts. They’re losing the battle. Nobody in our society supports them.”
Violence has intensified since July 2007 when the army cleared militants from a radical mosque in Islamabad.
Mr Zardari’s options are limited. Security policies are set by Pakistan’s all-powerful military, which nurtured militants in the 1980s to fight Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan.
Washington wants Pakistan to root out militants who cross into Afghanistan to attack US- and Nato-led troops. But doing so would require strategic sacrifices. Pakistan sees the militants as leverage against arch-enemy India’s influence in Afghanistan.
Washington, frustrated by what it says are inadequate efforts to wipe out the militants, has stepped up pilotless US drone aircraft attacks on Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.
While such strikes have killed high-profile figures, they have also generated anti-US anger, making it difficult for Mr Zardari to accommodate his US supporters.
The latest attack came on a day of industrial strikes in the southern city of Karachi, the country’s biggest city and its commercial capital, to protest against the violence gripping the nuclear-armed nation.
The strikes were called by religious and political leaders after a suicide bomber killed 43 people at a religious procession on Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened more violence.
“They are hired assassins. They are enemies of Pakistan. They are enemies of Islam,” interior minister Rehman Malik said on a visit to Karachi. – (Reuters)