Suicide bomber strikes in Pakistan

The Baltimore Sun

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan -- In the deadliest suicide attack in many months in Pakistan's tribal borderlands, a bomber struck a military convoy yesterday, killing 24 troops and injuring nearly 30 others, authorities said.

The attack could presage a broader war by Islamist militants against government forces in the wake of the siege of a radical mosque last week by elite Pakistani commandos in Islamabad, which left more than 100 people dead.

On the orders of President Pervez Musharraf, who is also the chief of the military, thousands of troops have been deployed in the volatile border region in recent days. Radical groups have vowed to avenge the government's storming of the Red Mosque and the killing of one of two brothers who presided over the complex.

Musharraf, a key American ally in the war in neighboring Afghanistan, said Thursday that Islamist militants would be pursued in "every corner" of Pakistan in the wake of the Red Mosque confrontation.

But Pakistan's military intelligence agencies have been accused of maintaining close ties with Islamic militant groups despite Musharraf's alliance with the United States. Recent U.S. intelligence assessments say the threat from a resurgent al-Qaida in Pakistan's border regions is at its highest levels since just before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The attack against Pakistani troops in North Waziristan coincided with violent incidents elsewhere in the border region. In the heart of Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier province, authorities said they found two anti-tank mines attached to a timing device in a car parked near a bank affiliated with Pakistan's military.

In another attack in the border areas, a vehicle carrying soldiers was hit by a bomb in the town of Banu, but there were no fatalities.

The suicide attack took place in the village of Daznaray, about 20 miles north of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Ardshad said that all those killed were army troops and that the wounded included five members of the paramilitary forces.

In November, 42 army recruits died when a suicide bomber attacked a recruitment center in the border town of Malakand.

Taliban commanders have set today as a deadline for government troops to remove recently established checkpoints in North Waziristan, the scene of a government pact last year under which government troops were to remain in their barracks and Taliban-linked fighters were to refrain from cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

The accord is viewed as a failure. Cross-border attacks spiked in its aftermath.

Arshad, the military spokesman, acknowledged that the suicide attack could have been in response to the storming of the Red Mosque, which had been a symbol of militants' opposition to the government.

Zulfiqar Ali and Laura King write for the Los Angeles Times.

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