SAIDU SHARIF, Pakistan, March 13, (Agencies): A suicide bomber driving a motorized rickshaw blew himself up at a security checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, officials said, killing at least 13 people, injuring 52 and underscoring the nation’s relentless security threat.
The blast in the small town of Saidu Sharif in Pakistan’s violence-battered Swat Valley was the second major attack in the country in less than 24 hours, raising fears of a new wave of violence by anti-government militants. Suicide bombers killed 55 people in near-simultaneous blasts Friday in the eastern city of Lahore.
No one claimed has responsibility for either attack, though suspicion quickly fell on the loose network of Islamist insurgents who have been laying siege to the U.S.-allied Islamabad government for years and who have stepped up attacks against security forces in recent days.
Maj Gen Ashfaq Nadeem, a top military official for the region, said Saturday’s attack killed 13 people, including two soldiers and two policemen.
“Such acts cannot demoralize us. I want to assure the people of Swat that we will continue fighting till the last Taliban are eliminated,” he said.
The attacker, driving a three-wheeled motorized rickshaw, detonated explosives at a roadblock manned by soldiers and police Saturday morning in Saidu Sharif, the administrative capital of Swat, said police official Qazi Farooq. The explosion sparked panic in the neighborhood, as soldiers in battle gear carried the victims — injured and dead — through the narrow streets to get them help.
Speaking from his hospital bed, Zia-ur-Rehman said he was traveling in another rickshaw when the blast shook the street and violently jolted his vehicle.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a twin suicide attack in Pakistan’s cultural capital Lahore rose to 57 on Saturday, as 12 more critically wounded died overnight, police said.
On Friday, two suicide bombers walked up to army vehicles in the crowded R A Bazaar area of Lahore, blowing themselves up as people sat down to eat before the main Muslim weekly prayers, police said.
Later that evening, five small bombs exploded elsewhere in Lahore causing no casualties and only minor damage, police said.