Pakistan bumps up Eid security after 60 killed

ISLAMABAD: Security forces were on red alert across Pakistan on Saturday after three bomb and gun attacks one day earlier left more than 60 dead, officials said.

The latest wave of attacks hit Pakistan as people prepare to celebrate Eid marking the end of Ramadhan on Monday.

An increase in the deployment of troops was ordered at the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the military said, after the death toll from twin blasts targeting minorities in the Kurram tribal district rose to 45 people on Saturday.

Screening at the airports, railway stations and bus terminals was being tightened amid reports that militants were preparing for more attacks, an Interior Ministry official said.

In the south-western city of Quetta, where a suicide bomber killed 14 people including police by detonating his car at a checkpoint, paramilitary Frontier Constabulary force was now patrolling the streets, local official Sajeel Mengal said.

Gunmen riding motorbikes shot and killed four police guards at a roadside restaurant in the southern city of Karachi, security official Muqaddas Rehman said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised to crush militancy with the full force and ordered the military to move swiftly against the perpetrators of “cowardly” attacks. DHAKA: At least 17 people were killed on Saturday when the cement-laden truck they were riding in fell into a roadside ditch in northern Bangladesh, police said.

Officer Biren Chandra Mahapatra said 12 people were killed on site when the truck skidded off the highway at Kalabagan in Rangpur district, more than 220 km north-west of the capital Dhaka. Five others died in hospital.

Eight people were undergoing treatment at two health facilities in the district, Mahapatra said.

The victims, most of whom were garment workers in Gazipur industrial district near Dhaka, were travelling to their family homes by truck to celebrate Eid al Fitr, according to Mahapatra. — dpa