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Pakistan probes bombing that killed 28, injured minister

By admin | April 29, 2007

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistan’s government has formed a team to investigate a suicide blast that targeted and injured the country’s interior minister and killed 28 others, officials said on Sunday.
The minister, Aftab Sherpao, had just addressed a public gathering Saturday in the town of Charsada in North West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan, when the bomber rushed towards the stage and detonated his explosives.

“We have formed a joint investigation team comprising provincial and federal police and investigation agencies to probe the incident,” the province’s chief minister, Akram Durrani, told reporters after meeting Sherpao.

Sherpao, a staunch supporter of President Pervez Musharraf, has talked prominently of the government’s achievements in fighting terrorism. Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its so-called “war on terror”.

“I was the target of this blast,” Sherpao told national television.

The interior ministry said Sherpao was given first aid at a hospital in Charsada before being taken to his residence in Peshawar.

Sherpao was not badly injured, officials said, and he travelled to Charsada on Sunday amid tight security to attend the funeral of nine people killed by the bomber.

Federal Information Minister Muhammad Ali Durrani told a press conference in Peshawar that the death toll had risen to 28 by Sunday, adding 52 people were hurt in the blast.

The attacker carried about eight to 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds) of explosive, Durrani said.

“The government is committed to stopping such incidents,” he added.

Provincial police chief Sharif Virk said that investigators had found the head of the suicide bomber.

“The bomber appeared to be an Afghan,” Virk said.

Charsada police chief Firoz Shah told AFP that forensic teams were still scouring the blast site and collecting samples.

The investigators have found two Russian-made detonators and parts of the jacket the suicide attacker was wearing, he said.

“We have sent the fragments of jacket for chemical examination and also taken the samples from the severed head of the attacker for DNA analysis,” Shah said.

Musharraf, currently visiting Bosnia, and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz issued statements condemning the attack and vowed it would not deter Pakistan from its campaign to wipe out terrorism.

Officials said Musharraf also spoke to Sherpao by telephone.

Sources close to Sherpao said Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai called the minister to inquire about his health.

North West Frontier Province, the home province of the ethnic Pashtun interior minister, has suffered years of violence in its semi-autonomous tribal areas, where Pakistani forces are battling Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Saturday’s bombing is the ninth in a series of suicide blasts that have rocked Pakistan this year, leaving scores of people dead, including two in the capital, Islamabad.

Authorities blamed most of the blasts on Pakistani Taliban militants enraged by a military air strike on an alleged Al-Qaeda training facility in the troubled South Waziristan tribal area in January.

In November, a suicide bomber killed 42 soldiers at an army base in Dargai, northwest Pakistan, again in apparent revenge for a missile raid on an alleged terrorist camp.

Topics: Pakistan News, Top Stories |