PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber in an explosives-laden pickup
truck leveled a police building in northwest Pakistan Wednesday,
killing five officers and wounding 30 other people in the latest attack
to rattle the country since the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The
Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility and promised more attacks as
they and other al-Qaida-affiliated groups seek to avenge bin Laden's
death. Already this month, the Pakistani Taliban — the country's
deadliest militant network — have claimed three other revenge attacks,
including a bloody 18-hour siege of a naval base.
The
target Wednesday in Peshawar appeared to be the police's criminal
investigation department, but the building was in an army compound and
several military facilities also are nearby, said regional police chief
Liaquat Ali Khan. Counterterrorism police officers were stationed at
the center, another officer said.
The Pakistani
Taliban is violently opposed to the United States, but also is angry at
the Pakistani state for cooperating with Washington since the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks. The group has carried out scores of attacks on
Pakistan's security establishment over the years.
Police officer Mohammad Zahid was in the basement when the bomb went off.
"I
felt like the sky fell on me," Zahid said in hospital, where he was
being treated for multiple injuries. "The explosion jammed the door of
my room in the basement, but there was a small hole in the wall so I
crawled through that."
Five officers died, and at least 30 people were wounded, police said.
Military
forces sealed off much of the cantonment as machines were brought in to
sift through the piles of rubble left at the site of what was once a
multistory building.
Government leaders condemned the bombing.
"Our
determination is much higher than before, and we will fight till the
defeat of these terrorists," said Bashir Bilour, a senior official with
the provincial government. He said at least 660 pounds (300 kilograms)
of explosives were used.
Bin Laden was killed
on May 2 by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs in the army town of Abbottabad in
a house roughly a mile away from Pakistan's premier military academy.
Since
the raid, U.S.-Pakistan relations have sunk to new lows. Pakistani
leaders insist they had no idea the al-Qaida leader had been living,
apparently for five years, in the large, three-story house in
Abbottabad. And they are furious that the U.S. raided the house without
telling them in advance.
The Taliban have taken
responsibility for a twin suicide bombing at a paramilitary police
training facility that killed around 90 people and a car bomb that
slightly wounded two Americans in northwest Pakistan.
But
the siege of the naval base in the southern port city of Karachi was
one of the most audacious assaults in years and further rattled a
military establishment already humiliated by the unilateral U.S. raid.
The militants destroyed two U.S.-supplied surveillance aircraft while
killing 10 people on the base. Four militants died in the fighting,
officials said. AP
