Fourth suicide bomber strikes Pakistan in one day

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A series of suicide attacks killed 6 in Pakistan on Wednesday, unnerving citizens whose growing sense of security has been shaken by multiple blasts this week. 

The latest assault happened in Peshawar, said police, after a bomber rode a motorcycle into a van carrying a judge travelling through an upmarket neighborhood.

“It was a suicide attack,” senior police official Sajjad Khan told AFP, adding that five people including the judge were injured. The driver of the van was killed.

The attack came after two suicide bombers launched an attack on a government compound in Pakistan’s restive tribal area earlier Wednesday, killing 5 people and wounding 7 others. 

“One attacker came by foot and started firing at forces while the other was on a motorbike and rammed into the main gate of the complex,” Hamidullah Khattak, an administration official in Mohmand tribal district, told AFP.

The one on foot was shot dead while the second blew himself up, he said, but not before they managed to kill 3 tribal police and two civilians. The military confirmed the toll.

Later, police said, another suicide bomber blew himself up when security forces surrounded him during a search operation in the area.

Wednesday’s attacks came two days after a deadly suicide bombing rocked the Punjab provincial capital Lahore, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens more.

Also on Monday two members of a bomb disposal unit were killed in Quetta, capital of restive Balochistan province, when a device they were defusing went off. It was unclear if the Quetta bomb was related to the other attacks.

The Pakistani Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has claimed the attacks in Lahore and Mohmand. Last week the group vowed a fresh wave of assaults on government installations, and a spokesman told AFP Wednesday the attacks would continue.

No group has yet claimed Wednesday’s Peshawar blast.

In 2014 the military launched a crackdown in the semi-autonomous tribal regions, where militants had previously operated with impunity, leading to a dramatic improvement in security in Pakistan over the last two years.

But homegrown groups like the umbrella Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taliban, can still carry out spectacular assaults. – Rappler.com