New attack on Pakistan army kills 13
It is the second assault in two days targeting security forces. The Taliban again claims responsibility.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide bomber struck near Pakistani army headquarters Monday, killing at least 13 people, including six soldiers, in the second major attack on security forces in as many days.
Eighteen others were wounded in the bombing in the garrison city of Rawalpindi when a bicyclist blew himself up as police tried to stop him near a military checkpoint, authorities said.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, as it had for the previous day’s attack, when a bomb exploded inside an army base in northwestern Pakistan as a convoy of security forces was preparing to depart for the volatile North Waziristan region. The area is in the tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan, where soldiers and paramilitary forces have been battling the militant organization.
At least 22 soldiers were killed and 30 were wounded, many of them critically, in Sunday’s bombing.
The attacks mark a significant escalation in the Pakistani Taliban’s campaign of assaults and raises new questions about Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ’s efforts to engage the insurgent group — which wants to overthrow the government and establish a hard-line Islamic state — in peace talks. Taliban leaders have said they are ready for talks, but they continue to carry out attacks.
In response to the violence, Sharif, who was elected in May, canceled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Before the attack in Rawalpindi, which lies just outside the capital, Islamabad, police and law enforcement agencies had received intelligence about the potential presence of a suicide bomber in the city, according to security officials. They declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
Witnesses said the bomber was cycling toward a military checkpoint next to the army’s general headquarters when police tried to stop him. That was when he detonated his explosives, said Mian Maqbool, a senior police official.
The blast occurred in Rawalpindi’s busy Royal Artillery Bazaar area about 8 a.m., as parents were taking their children to school, Maqbool said.
Officials said six security personnel and seven civilians were killed. Police said they recovered remains believed to be those of the bomber and that they would undergo DNA testing.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Shahidullah Shahid, told news agencies by telephone that the attack was in retaliation for the military campaign against the group in the tribal areas, as well as for the death in May of its senior commander, Waliur Rehman, in a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan.
Pakistani security forces have often come under attack from insurgents in the tribal belt, where such groups enjoy a haven along with Taliban militants who are battling U.S.-led coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan. But attacks in heavily guarded Rawalpindi are rare.
In October 2009, Taliban commandos besieged the army headquarters for 22 hours in a standoff that left 23 people dead, including nine militants. shashank.bengali @latimes.com Special correspondent Ali reported from Peshawar and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.