Suicide attack kills five in Pakistan's Swat valley
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide attack targeted a Pakistani military convoy on Thursday, killing five people in the northwestern Swat valley where the army put down a Taliban uprising last year.It…
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide attack targeted a Pakistani military convoy on Thursday, killing five people in the northwestern Swat valley where the army put down a Taliban uprising last year.It was the deadliest attack in the district since February and underscored lingering insecurity in a region that until a major military operation last year was largely outside government control and paralysed by Taliban militants.The bombing came as the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers in Islamabad held their first substantive talks since the 2008 Mumbai attacks -- which New Delhi blamed on Pakistani militants -- torpedoed their peace process.Bombs and attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,500 people across nuclear-armed Pakistan since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.Anwar Khan, 40, who runs a general store in Mingora, said he was outside asking someone not to park in front of his shop when the bomb exploded."I felt something very hot pierce my shoulder. A red, bloody piece of flesh hit my right cheek and after that I passed out," he told AFP by telephone after having shrapnel extracted from his shoulder in hospital.The bomber detonated in a busy street outside a bus terminal, littering the road with burnt out vehicles and sparking a frantic rescue effort. Police said five people were killed, including two women and a couple visiting from Pakistan's central province of Punjab, in a normally busy street outside a bus terminal while a military convoy was driving past."Two legs of the suicide bomber were found," Swat police chief Qazi Ghulam Farooq told AFP.Television footage showed volunteers carrying at least one body away from the site, while others frantically pulled at the twisted doors to rescue two victims sitting in the front seats of one non-military vehicle.Hospital officials said 47 people were wounded, including four women and seven children. Most of them had fractured bones and head injuries.A military spokesman said the
last modification 2010-07-15 14:30:20
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