PESHAWAR, Pakistan, July 10, (Agencies): The death toll from a suicide attack in a volatile border region of Pakistan climbed to 102 on Saturday, showing the militants’ continued ability to stage deadly strikes despite losing ground in army offensives.
The Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), or Taleban Movement of Pakistan, claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack in Mohmand, a Pashtun region on the northwestern border with Afghanistan, where security forces have stepped up operations against militants in recent months.
Friday’s attack is the deadliest Pakistan has suffered since an attack on a market in Peshawar in October last year that killed 105.
Five children, aged 5 to 10, and several women were among the dead on Friday, and the toll rose after rescuers working throughout the night found more bodies in the rubble.
“We have recovered more bodies from the debris of dozens of shops that were razed to the ground by the blast and the number of dead has increased” to 102, said Rasool Khan, assistant political agent of Mohmand.
The bomber blew himself up outside Khan’s office.
Late on Friday, a TTP spokesman in Mohmand who identified himself as Ikramullah Mohmand, said anti-Taleban tribal elders from various peace committees who had come to Khan’s office were the target.
A senior elder and two others were killed in the attack.
Among nearly 80 wounded were several people displaced by fighting between security forces and militants, who were collecting relief goods near the blast side.
The latest militant attack underscored multiple security challenges facing nuclear-armed US ally Pakistan, whose support is vital in attempts to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan, where US-led NATO troops are fighting a raging Taleban insurgency.
As Adnan Khan sifted through the rubble in this northwest Pakistani village Saturday, his grief mingled with a sense of disbelief. Of the 102 people killed by a pair of suicide bombers here the day before, 10 were his relatives. Aunts, uncles, cousins — all perished in the deadliest attack in Pakistan this year.
“People came here yesterday to receive biscuits and edible oil,” the college student said. “I don’t know why terrorists killed them.”
Yakaghund village lies in Mohmand, one of several regions in Pakistan’s tribal belt where al-Qaeda and Taleban militants are believed to be hiding. The Friday strike showed that Islamist extremists remain a deadly force along this area bordering Afghanistan, despite pressure from army offensives or drone-fired US missiles.
Although the Pakistani Taleban said anti-militant tribal elders were the target, it was dozens of ordinary men and women who bore the brunt of the strike. Many had lined up nearby to pick up donated food and goods such as farm equipment when the blasts occurred.
The bombs’ target appeared to be the office of Rasool Khan, a deputy Mohmand administrator, that tribal elders were visiting. Local journalists told The Associated Press that Pakistani Taleban spokesman Akramullah Mohmand had called them late Friday and claimed responsibility.
None of those elders were hurt, officials said. Some are believed to have been involved in citizens’ militias that have risen against the insurgents.
The attack also wounded 168 people in Yakaghund, a village of 4,000 that lies on the edge of Mohmand and the Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province. Some 70 to 80 shops were damaged or destroyed, while damage to a prison building allowed 28 inmates — ordinary criminals, not militants — to flee, Rasool Khan said.
Some houses nearby, including those belonging to Adnan Khan’s relatives, also were leveled.
People on Saturday kept up the search through the piles of brick and rubble left behind. As of midday, at least 15 people were still believed to be trapped beneath, said Ibrahim Khan, a security official who gave the latest casualty tolls.
Sher Afzal, 22, hoped his uncle and cousin would be found.
“My uncle came here to collect his national identity card (from a government office), and he is still missing with his son,” Afzal said. “We have checked all the hospitals, but we could not trace them.”
The US has pushed Islamabad to clamp down on militants who threaten Western troops across the border in Afghanistan and to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan itself.
The Pakistani army has carried out operations in Mohmand, but it has been unable to extirpate Islamist militants hiding there. Its efforts to rely on citizen militias to take on the militants have had limited success in Mohmand.
On Saturday, many in Yakaghund were too scared to even mention the word “Taleban,” but several said it was the US presence in Afghanistan that was the real cause of the violence in Pakistan.
They also blamed the Pakistani government for not caring about the effects of the US war across the border on Pakistani citizens.
“Mohmand was a peaceful area, but we have lost this peace since the American attacks in Afghanistan,” said Haji Mohammad Amin, 65, a farmer.
“The government policies are responsible for this. They don’t provide security for the common people,” said Adnan Khan, the college student who lost 10 relatives.
The Friday attack was the third this year to kill more than 90 people, and it was the worst attack in the country since a car bombing killed 112 people at a crowded market in the main northwest city of Peshawar last October.
Nevertheless, army operations and US missile strikes are believed to have disrupted militants’ activities enough to where attacks in the country have decreased this year so far, especially in the northwest. In the last three months of 2009, for instance, more than 500 people were killed in a surge of attacks across the country.