A Taliban suicide bomber struck inside one of Pakistan’s major cities for the second time this week. Just four days after a suicide bomber killed five UN employees at World Food Program offices in Islamabad, another bomber detonated a car packed with explosives at a bazaar in Peshawar, the capital of the Northwest Frontier Province.
Forty-nine people have been reported killed and more than 100 have been wounded, some critically, after the suicide bomber detonated more than 100 kilograms of explosives packed in a car in the Khyber Bazaar, one of the busiest markets in the provincial capital. More than 50 people have been reported as critically wounded.
The bomb was built to inflict “maximum casualties,” according to police.
“The device was planted in the door panels of the vehicle and included machine gun ammunition, designed to cause maximum casualties,” Dawn reported.
Today’s attack is the second since Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, and his regional commanders held a press conference in South Waziristan and vowed to restart a suicide campaign in Pakistan. Hakeemullah said the attacks would continue until the military halted operations in the tribal areas.
The Taliban last struck in Peshawar on Sept. 26, when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive-laden car outside of a bank and a military housing complex. Twenty people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in the suicide attack.
That same day, a suicide bomber rammed his truck into a police station in Bannu, killing 10 people and wounding dozens more.
4 Comments
Maybe finally the Pak army will make a move into South Waziristan?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/49-killed-in-bomb-blast-in-Peshawar/articleshow/5105262.cms
And so comes the Taliban Winter Offensive of 2009.
Right now the civillian leadership is too obsessed with trying Musharraf and too busy putting out fires of the public outcry regarding the Kerry-Lugar Bill and with the Balochistan Reform Package to really care. The military will be too busy balking at Kerry-Lugar to take the fight to the next level too.
Is it possible the Taliban actually want the Pakistanis to move in, so that they can bog them down in the winter, attack their supply convoys and turn it into a victory for them? If the Pakistanis actually are “starving” the Taliban, the Taliban would benefit from attacking their convoys and probably outlast the army.
The concept of suicide bombers is growing by leaps and bounds now-a-days, but I don’t understand one thing-why and how these are being produced in such a mass number. Almost everyday I hear about suicide bombers. Is it lack of enough education to such people who participate to become suicide bombers that forces them to do such inhumane things or is it something like hypnotizing them to do it.
I guess, people should be presented with more information on suicide bombers than just providing with their activities. May be this will enhance awareness among youth and may there will be lesser suicide bombers..