Suicide bomber kills 19 in attack on Pakistani police station

A suicide bomber killed 19 people and wounded scores more in an attack on a police station in Pakistan’s troubled northwest today.

The suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into the back wall of a police station in the district of Lakki Marwat in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Between 40 and 50 policemen were at the station at the time, according to SAMAA; nine policemen and 10 civilians were among those killed.

Lakki Marwat was also the scene of a horrific mass casualty suicide attack on New Year’s Day. A suicide bomber detonated his SUV packed with explosives as Pakistanis were gathered for a volleyball match in the town of Shah Hassan Khel. The attack killed 90 people. The Taliban carried out the attack in an attempt to break the will of local tribal leaders who had raised a militia to keep the Taliban out of their town.

Today’s suicide attack is the fourth in Pakistan since the Sept. 1 coordinated attack on a Shia procession in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province. More than 30 people were killed in the blasts. On Sept. 3, suicide bombers killed more than 60 Shia protesters in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, and a guard outside an Ahmadi mosque in Mardan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Both the Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi, a front for the Punjabi Taliban, claimed to have carried out the attacks in Lahore and Quetta. A spokesman for Qari Hussain Mehsud, the Taliban’s master trainer of suicide bombers, said that the attacks were to avenge the murder of Sunnis and threatened that more suicide bombers were ready to strike.

Qari Hussain proudly took credit for the Quetta strikes and also promised to strike in the West. “We take pride in taking responsibility for the Quetta attack,” he told Reuters on Sept. 3. “We will launch attacks in America and Europe very soon.”

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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1 Comment

  • mira@israel says:

    i can understand how to fight against people who are afraid of punishment and death, but how to fight with epople who are ready to die being leaded by their hatred-i have no idea.

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