SUICIDE ATTACK TARGETS US VEHICLE IN PAKISTAN
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sept 3, 2012 (AFP) - A suicide car bomber targeted a US consulate vehicle in Pakistan on Monday, in an attack officials said killed four, but there were conflicting accounts on whether Americans were among the dead.
Peshawar police chief Imtiaz Altaf said a suicide bomber rammed a “foreign mission car” with his vehicle, which was carrying up to 110 kilos of explosives, including more than 10 mortar shells. Altaf said up to 19 people were wounded.
A half-burnt US passport was recovered from a badly damaged car and seen by an AFP photographer
A half-burnt US passport was recovered from a badly damaged car and seen by an AFP photographer.
The bomber struck during the morning rush hour, close to residential quarters used by the US consulate in the northwestern city of Peshawar and near the office of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Although the identities of the victims were unclear, it was the deadliest attack in two years targeting Americans in Pakistan, a frontline state in the US-led war on terror and the fight against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information Minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said four people were killed in the suicide attack, two of them Americans.
The US State Department confirmed that a consulate vehicle was hit in an apparent terrorist strike and said that four people were injured, but that no US consulate staff were killed.
Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said two Americans and two Pakistanis working for the consulate were understanding medical treatment for their wounds, and that the US was “seeking further information about other victims”.