Suicide bomber kills 2 in Peshawar

A suicide bomber on a motor bike rammed into a van carrying some judges

ISLAMABAD: A suicide bomber attacked a van carrying judges in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Wednesday, killing the driver and a passerby, police said, the second attack of the day in a new surge in militant violence.

Security has improved in Pakistan over the past few years but a spate of attacks in recent days, and a threat by a hardline militant faction to unleash a new campaign against the government, has raised fears of bloodshed.

“A suicide bomber on a motor bike rammed into an official van in which some judges were travelling,” senior superintendent of Peshawar police, Sajjad Khan, told media.

He said three female judges and one male judge had been taken to a nearby hospital while the driver of the van and a passerby had been killed.

The attack took place in a wealthy neighbourhood of the northwestern city, where Taliban gunmen attacked a military-run school in December 2014 and killed 134 children and 19 adults.

Former cricket star Imran Khan, Pakistan’s main opposition leader, was due to visit the nearby hospital. Media reported that he was unharmed. Khan’s party rules Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of which Peshawar is capital.

In a separate attack on Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a government office in the northwestern Mohmand Agency, killing five people.

There was no immediate claim for the Peshawar attack but the Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the Mohmand Agency blast.

The same group claimed an attack in the city of Lahore on Monday in which 13 people, five of them policemen, were killed.