Attack on Police Convoy in Pakistan Kills 6

A militant attack on a police convoy near the city of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan has killed at least six policemen.
Several others were wounded, including the district police officer, in the attack Friday on the Indus Highway. Local media say the militants armed with rockets ambushed the convoy, which was on its way from Peshawar to Kohat.

A wounded driver was able to reach Kohat, where the wounded were rushed to a hospital. A police contingent was sent to the area after the attack.

Earlier Friday, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a convoy of NATO containers in northwestern Pakistan, killing a driver and wounding another person.

Local tribal police official Khan Dad said the gunmen opened fire from the nearby mountains as the convoy entered Pakistan from Afghanistan in the troubled Khyber region.

The convoy was heading for the port city of Karachi.

Militant attacks are common in northwestern Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan is a key transit route for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, from where supplies are driven to the border from the Arabian Sea port of Karachi.

In Peshawar, a suicide bomber attacked the vehicle of a religious leader Friday, killing three people.

Authorities say the leader, Haji Hayatullah, was not in the vehicle when it was attacked.  His driver, a bodyguard and a passerby were killed in the blast.

No one has claimed responsibility.

from VOA News
May 24, 2013

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Pakistan: Explosion in Darra Adam Khel; 15 killed

(file photo)

PESHAWAR: At least 15 people were killed and 25 were wounded in a car bomb blast in Kohat’s Darra Adam Khel area on Saturday.
The explosion took place in Darra Adam Khel’s Janan market and targeted the main office of the region’s anti-Taliban peace committee.

At least 20 shops were destroyed as a result of the explosion and the injured had been shifted to hospitals in Darra Adam Khel and Peshawar for treatment.

Seven bodies and 25 injured had been brought to Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, the hospital’s MS Raheem Jan Afridi said. Whereas, eight bodies had been taken to the Darra Adam Khel Hospital, MS Alif Khan Afridi said.

At least five of the injured were in critical conditions. The injured included two children.

Mohammad, the spokesman for Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan Darra Adam Khel’s Tariq Afridi group, denied responsibility for the attack.

Speaking to Dawn.com earlier, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain had stated that seven people had been killed and 19 had been injured.

Hussain said those targeted were members of the anti-Taliban peace committee.

Police had cordoned off the area and had started a search operation.

from DAWN
by Zahir Shah Sherazi

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10 killed, 6 injured as passenger van hit by bomb in NW Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, July 18 (Xinhua) -- At least ten people were killed and six others injured when a passenger van was hit by a bomb in Pakistan's northwest tribal area of Orakzai on Wednesday morning, reported local Urdu TV channel Express.

According to the local media reports, the blast took place at about 7:00 a.m. local time when a passenger van carrying an estimated 20 people on board was hit by a remote-controlled bomb planted by the roadside while on its way from Orakzai to Kohat, a neighboring district to the south of Orakzai.

Located in northwest Pakistan, Orakzai is the only one out of the seven tribal areas in the country, that does not border Afghanistan.

Initial reports said that the bomb was planted inside the van, but later most of the local media reported that it was a roadside planted bomb that hit the van.

The van was hit by the bomb in the Spaey area, a place in the border area between Orakzai and Kohat.

All the killed are closely related relatives, said local media, adding that the injured people have been shifted to a nearby military hospital.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

from XINHUA
2012-07-18 10:37:30

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Car bomb kills 13 at Peshawar bus station (+video)

People visit the site of a bomb blast in Peshawar, Pakistan on Thursday, Feb 23, 2012 - Photo/Mohammad Sajjad

PESHAWAR: A car bomb ripped through a bus station on Thursday, killing 13 people, including two children, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, officials said.

The attack happened on the road towards the garrison city of Kohat near the lawless tribal belt, a stronghold of militants blamed for violence plaguing both Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan.

“The death toll in the car bomb blast has now risen to 13 while more than 35 have been wounded,” city police chief Imtiaz Altaf told AFP.

A senior doctor in the local Lady Reading hospital, Rahim Jan confirmed the new toll, adding that seven injured people were in a critical condition.

Several of the bodies were charred beyond recognition, he said.

Around a dozen passenger coaches were heavily damaged, with pieces of human flesh scattered and blood smeared on the ground.

At the main hospital in Peshawar an AFP reporter said the wounded cried and relatives of the dead sobbed over the bodies of their loved ones.

Dilawar Khan, 60, who was wounded in his left shoulder, told AFP his 12-year-old son Abdullah was killed while helping him run a tea stall at the bus station while on a break from school.

“I was preparing tea for the drivers and my son was serving tea for some other drivers when the huge blast happened,” Khan said, through his tears.

“Something like shrapnel hit me in the shoulder but I was conscious. Then I was brought to hospital and saw my son’s dead body. I’ve lost everything.” There was no claim of responsibility and the precise target was unclear, but attacks blamed on Taliban and other homegrown extremists opposed to the government’s support for the US war in Afghanistan are common.

“At the moment I can’t say what the exact target of the bomb attack was but all those killed were innocent civilians,” Mohammad Siraj, the top government official in Peshawar, told reporters.

Tahir Ayub, a senior police official, told reporters that most of those killed were passengers waiting to board coaches.

“Two children were among the dead. According to a preliminary investigation, the bomb was planted in the car,” he said.

“The bomb was planted in a car at the station, and around 40 kilogrammes of explosives were used,” police official Shafqat Malik told reporters.

from DAWN

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