01 Jan 2010 15:49:42 GMT
Source: Reuters
ISLAMABAD, Jan 1 (Reuters) -
The death toll from a suicide bombing of a volleyball game in northwest Pakistan rose to over 88 on Friday, a senior police official told Reuters by telephone.
"The death toll has now crossed 45 and it will rise further as dead bodies and wounded people are still on the open field and under rubble," said local police chief Ayub Khan.
(For full coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan, click on [ID:nAFPAK]
(For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see:http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakist an)
(Reporting by Kamran Haider; Writing by Michael Georgy)
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Pakistan volleyball blast kills 88 - police
01 Jan 2010 20:35:44 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Explosion as young men played volleyball
* Bomber blew himself up in SUV in middle of field
* Police say second suspect vehicle fled
(Updates with new death toll)
By Kamran Haider
ISLAMABAD, Jan 1 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up in an SUV at a volleyball game in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing 88 people in a village that opposes al Qaeda-linked Taliban insurgents, police said.
The bomber struck as young men played volleyball in front of a crowd of spectators, including elderly residents and children, near the town of Lakki Marwat, officials said.
The bloodshed will put President Asif Ali Zardari's efforts to fight the Taliban under greater scrutiny, pressure he does not need at a time when corruption cases against his allies could be revived.
"It's just a disaster. I can see flesh, bodies and wounded all around," Fazl-e-Akbar, a witness, told Reuters by telephone. "It's dark. Vehicles' headlights are being used to search for victims."
Local police chief Ayub Khan said the bomber blew himself up in his sport utility vehicle in the middle of the field. A second vehicle was believed to have fled the scene.
"We have removed all bodies and wounded from the rubble," Khan said, adding that 88 people were killed.
It was one of the bloodiest bombings in U.S. ally Pakistan since the October 2007 attack that killed at least 139 people when former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Zardari's wife, returned home from self-imposed exile.
An attack on a sporting event is highly unusual, but could be part of the militants' strategy of bombing crowded areas such as markets to inflict mass casualties and spread fear and chaos.
VILLAGE MILITIA
Police said the village had formed an armed anti-Taliban militia, a phenomenon that started in Pakistan last year.
Despite major military offensives against their strongholds, the Taliban have killed hundreds of people in bombings.
Britain's Foreign Office described the attack as horrific and said it underlined the urgent need to fight extremism.
"It is a threat that the international community must help Pakistan to tackle, in the interests both of Pakistan's people and of wider stability," it said in a statement.
In a sign of growing security fears, the United Nations will withdraw some of its staff from Pakistan because of safety concerns, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Thursday.
"We have got to be on the offensive and launch precise strikes on (militant) training centres and hideouts. They're losing the battle. Nobody in our society supports them," North West Frontier Province's information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, told Reuters.
Violence has intensified since July 2007 when the army cleared militants from a radical mosque in Islamabad.
MILITARY CALLS SHOTS
Zardari's options are limited. Security policies are set by Pakistan's all-powerful military, which nurtured militants in the 1980s to fight Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan.
Washington wants Pakistan to root out militants who cross into Afghanistan to attack U.S.- and NATO-led troops. But doing so would require strategic sacrifices. Pakistan sees them as leverage against arch-enemy India in Afghanistan.
Washington, frustrated by what it says are inadequate efforts to wipe out the militants, has stepped up pilotless U.S. drone aircraft attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan.
While the strikes killed high-profile figures, they have also generated anti-American anger, making it difficult for Zardari to accommodate his U.S. supporters.
The latest attack came on a day of strikes in the southern city of Karachi, the country's biggest and its commercial capital, to denounce violence gripping the nuclear-armed nation.
The strikes were called by religious and political leaders after a suicide bomber killed 43 people at a religious procession on Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened more violence.
"They are hired assassins. They are enemies of Pakistan. They are enemies of Islam," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters on a trip to Karachi to show support for residents.
Security forces carried out patrols. But residents were taking no chances.
"We are already losing business and can't take the risk of going out today and opening our shops," said Saleem Ahmed, who sells electronics at one of the city's markets. (Additional reporting by Faisal Aziz in Karachi and Alamgir Bitani in Peshawar; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan)
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90 killed in Lakki Marwat bombing
* SUV loaded with 250kg of explosives detonated in middle of volleyball match in Shah Hasan Khel village
* Nearly 300, including children and elderly, present at time of attack
PESHAWAR: At least 90 people were killed after a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden pickup truck in the middle of a volleyball game in the village of Shah Hasan Khel, in Bannu division of Lakki Marwat on New Year’s Day.
“It’s just a disaster. I can see flesh, bodies and wounded all around,” Fazl-e-Akbar, a witness, told Reuters by telephone. “It’s dark. Vehicles’ headlights are being used to search for victims.”
Local police chief Ayub Khan told Reuters the bomber blew himself up in an SUV in the middle of the field and there was believed to be a second vehicle, which fled the scene. Police say more than 60 people are being treated at local hospitals. Security forces have cordoned off the village.
High-intensity explosives: Khan said the bomber drove a vehicle loaded with around 250 kilogrammes of high-intensity explosives onto the field, which lies in a congested neighbourhood. Some nearby houses collapsed and “we fear that some 10 or so people might have been trapped in the rubble.”
Khan said that more than 20 houses, on both sides of the open ground where the match was being played, had collapsed.
In addition, a group of local tribal elders was holding a meeting at a nearby mosque. The mosque was damaged and some people inside were killed, he said. “Four paramilitary soldiers are also among the dead,” he added.
Body count: AP quoted another police official as saying some 300 people were on the field when the incident took place. A large number of them are said to have been elderly residents and children.
Anwer Khan, 18, a student, said that he had just stepped out of his house when he saw a black pickup speeding towards the spectators. “A giant flame leapt towards the sky. There was bright light everywhere, just like a flash, and then a very huge blast shook everything,” he said.
NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the death toll may rise further. “The locality has been a hub of militants. Locals set up a lashkar and expelled the militants from this area. This attack seems to be a reaction to their expulsion,” AP quoted the local police chief as saying.
Reactions to the bombing rolled in swiftly on Friday night, with both the president and the prime minister condemning the attack “in the strongest terms”. Britain also slammed the attack as “horrific” and vowed to work with Islamabad to tackle the threat posed by violent extremism. agencies
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Pakistan attack a warning to anti-Taliban tribes
AP
A Pakistani police officer mans a checkpoint as the sun sets marking the end of AP – A Pakistani police officer mans a checkpoint as the sun sets marking the end of the year on the outskirts …
By IJAZ MOHAMMED and NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writers Ijaz Mohammed And Nahal Toosi, Associated Press Writers – 29 mins ago
SHAH HASAN KHEL, Pakistan – A suicide car bombing that killed 95 people on a volleyball field sent a bloody New Year's warning to Pakistanis who have formed militias to fend off Taliban insurgents in the northwestern region near the Afghan border.
The attack on the outskirts of Lakki Marwat city was one of the deadliest in recent Pakistani history. As local tribesmen prepared for funerals Saturday, rescuers searched rubble for more bodies, and many in the area were too terrified to speculate on who staged the assault.
The suicide bomber detonated some 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of high-intensity explosives on the crowded field in Shah Hasan Khel village during a volleyball tournament held Friday near a meeting of anti-Taliban elders. The elders, who had helped set up an anti-Taliban militia in the area, were probably the actual target, police said.
Lakki Marwat district is near South Waziristan, a tribal region where the army has been battling the Pakistani Taliban since October.
The military operation was undertaken with the backing of the U.S., which is eager for Pakistan to free its tribal belt of militants believed to be involved in attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan. The offensive has provoked apparent reprisal attacks that had already killed more than 500 people in Pakistan before Friday's blast.
Militants have struck all across the nuclear-armed country, and they appear increasingly willing to hit groups beyond security forces. No group claimed responsibility for Friday's blast, but that is not uncommon when many civilians are killed.
Across Pakistan's northwest, where the police force is thin, underpaid and under-equipped, various tribes have taken security in their own hands over the past two years by setting up citizen militias to fend off the Taliban.
The government has encouraged such "lashkars," and in some areas they have proven key to reducing militant activity.
Still, tribal leaders who face off with the militants do so at high personal risk. Several suicide attacks have targeted meetings of anti-Taliban elders, and militants also often go after individuals. One reason militancy has spread in Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal belt is because insurgents have slain dozens of tribal elders and filled a power vacuum.
Shah Hasan Khel village "has been a hub of militants. Locals set up a militia and expelled the militants from this area. This attack seems to be reaction to their expulsion," local police Chief Ayub Khan told reporters.
Mohammed Qayyum, 22, tried to avoid crying Saturday as he recounted how his younger brother died when the explosion shook the neighborhood. His family's house was among the more than three dozen nearby mud-brick homes that toppled.
"After the blast, I heard cries, I saw dust, and I saw injured and dead bodies," said Qayyum, who escaped injury. "See this rubble, see these destroyed homes? Everybody was happy before the explosion, but today we are mourning."
Like many others in the village that had prided itself on standing up to the militants, Qayyum refused to comment when asked who he thought was behind the bombing.
Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for Pakistan's tribal regions, described the attack as a big blow to Pakistanis resisting the Taliban, but noted past militant strikes had not stymied the resistance.
"I'm sure that even with this blow it will not make much difference to the resolve of the people to fight the war on terrorism with their own means," Shah said.
In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attack.
"The United States will continue to stand with the people of Pakistan in their efforts to chart their own future free from fear and intimidation and will support their efforts to combat violent extremism and bolster democracy," she said in a statement.
Authorities said about 300 people were on the field at the time of Friday's blast and security had been provided for the games and the tribal elders' meeting. Police official Tajammal Shah said Saturday that 95 people died and 50 were wounded. Eight children, six paramilitary troops and two police were among the dead, he said.
Omar Gull, 35, a wounded paramilitary soldier, said the attacker drove recklessly into the crowd and people were trying to figure out what was happening when the explosives detonated. "It was then chaos," he said.
The attack was one of the deadliest in years, and the second deadliest since the latest wave of bloodshed began in October. A car bomb killed 112 people at a crowded market in Peshawar on Oct. 28.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani vowed Saturday to defeat militants, saying "the agenda of terrorists is to destabilize the country, to create panic and spread fear."
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Toosi reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
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