Thursday, August 11, 2011 – According to local officials, a female suicide attacker and a handcart bomb targeted Pakistani police on Thursday, killing six people in the first deadly attacks to hit the northwest during Ramadan.
The officials further added, dozens were wounded in Thursday’s attacks, carried out several hours apart in the Lahori Gate area of Peshawar, a teeming city of 2.5 million, targeting first a police van and secondly a police checkpost.
Police official Shafqat Malik quoted by AFP said, “This was a female suicide bomber aged around 17 or 18 who threw a hand grenade on the police checkpost, 20 metres away from the site of the first blast, and then blew herself up.”
Mr. Malik further added, “Her vest did not explode completely. She was killed and another woman was also killed and three policemen were injured.”
There was initial confusion on whether the second woman was also carrying explosives, but police and medics later said she had not.
A medical official, Doctor Rahim Afridi quoted by AFP said, “The other woman is more than 60 years old. Her face is completely disfigured and beyond identification. Her body has no sign of wearing a suicide vest. We feel that she was just a passer-by.”
Mr. Afridi further added, 16 people were admitted with injuries after the second blast, including a 10-year-old boy.
Meanwhile, Police official Imtiaz Shah also confirmed that the other woman was a passerby and had no connection to the woman, believed to have been around 17 years old.
This comes as the Pakistani Taliban claimed for the first time that a married Uzbek couple carried out a suicide attack on a police station that killed 10 officers, in late June.
The insurgents threatened to carry out further husband-and-wife bombings.
On the other hand, four officers and a child were killed earlier when a bomb hidden in a handcart on the roadside, tore through a passing police van carrying 20 personnel at 7:10 am, security officials said.
According to police officials Muhammad Faisal, Eighteen other people were wounded in the incident.
While another police official, Imtiaz Shah said, “The police van was carrying 20 policemen.”
He further added, the vehicle was wrecked and that a group of schoolboys had been in the area when the bomb exploded.
He also said, “A 12-year-old boy has also been killed.”
