Lahore blast toll rises to 13

 Updated at: 1605 PST,

Monday, March 08, 2010  

The International News, LAHORE:

A suicide car bomber has struck a building where police interrogate high-profile suspects in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, killing at least 13 people and wounding 61 others, including women taking children to school, officials said.

The attack shattered what had been a relative lull in major violence in Pakistan.

It also showed that rebels retain the ability to strike the country's heartland, far from the Afghan border regions where al Qaida and the Taliban have long thrived, despite army offensives aimed at wiping them out.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban and allied militant groups.

Those groups are believed to have been responsible for a wave of attacks which killed more than 600 people starting in October, including several in major Pakistani cities. More recent attacks have been smaller and confined to remote north-west regions near Afghanistan.

The latest explosion comes amid reports of a Pakistani crackdown on Afghan Taliban and al Qaida operatives using its soil. Among the militants said to have been arrested is the Afghan Taliban's number two commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

The bomb went off outside a Punjab province police building, police official Zulfikar Hameed said. TV footage showed a huge crater in the ground where the blast seemed to have originated. It appeared the suicide bomber rammed a car packed with as much as 1,300lb (600kg) of explosives into the building's perimeter wall, officials said.

Police official Chaudhry Shafiq said 13 people had died. Of the 61 people wounded, several were in a critical condition.

Hospital official Jawed Akram said the dead included at least one woman and a young girl, apparently part of a group heading to a school. Several women were among the wounded.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik painted the attack as sign of desperation from militants whose "backs have been broken" by the army. "They are taking guerrilla actions but gradually it is decreasing and they are being arrested and in the coming days they will have no chance," he said.

8 Taliban killed in S Waziristan airstrike

The Daily Times, Pakistan, Monday, March 8, 2010

* Unidentified assailants gun down Taliban commander in North Waziristan

LAHORE: At least eight people were killed and two injured as fighter jets pounded Taliban hideouts in Sararogha tehsil of South
Waziristan, reported a private news channel on Sunday.

The channel quoted its sources as saying that at least two fighter jets targeted the hideouts in Hamdana area at around 2pm. The death toll is expected to rise.

Meanwhile, unidentified gunmen killed a local Taliban commander identified as Maulvi Noor Muhammad in North Waziristan. The Taliban commander was targeted on the outskirts of Miranshah.

“Unknown gunmen fired at Maulvi Noor Mohammad outside a residence of his relatives on the outskirts of Miranshah on Friday ... the assailants escaped,” the AFP news agency quoted local official Khadim Ali as saying.

An intelligence official also confirmed the killing, but said the number of gunmen and the motive behind the attack were not yet clear.

However, the AP news agency quoted a local Taliban member as saying that Maulvi Noor Mohammad was ambushed on Saturday night by relatives of a man he recently tortured and killed.

Intelligence officials say Noor Muhammad led a group of about 400 men, who focused on staging cross-border attacks against US and NATO troops in Afghanistan in coordination with other commanders in the area.

Noor Muhammad’s killing was the latest in a number of reports – almost impossible to confirm independently – of the deaths of mid-level and senior Taliban figures.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik had on Saturday said it was likely that Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, deputy of the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), was killed in an air strike in Mohmand tribal district. daily times monitor/agencies