Militants in Pakistan's restive tribal areas carried out two attacks apparently as a retaliation to the bloody Lal Masjid crackdown.
ISLAMABAD: Local Taliban militants carried out a series of terror attacks in Pakistan on Thursday killing 34 people, most of them policemen, as a retaliation to the bloody crackdown on the Lal Masjid.
Twenty six people, including eight policemen, were killed in the city of Hub in southwestern Balochistan province when a bomb exploded near a bus stop at 8:30 am this morning, a local civic official told reporters from the scene of the explosion.
The blast took place when a bus carrying a group of Chinese engineers passed through the area. The Chinese managed to escape but many policemen escorting the bus along with local people were killed, a police officer in Hub, Abdullah Afridi Afridi said.
In another blast, eight persons were killed and 23 injured when a suicide bomber exploded his car at the gate of a police training center at the city of Hangu in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), district Mayor Ghani ur Rehman said.
The bomber tried to enter the centre but was stopped at the gate where he exploded the car.
Eight shops were destroyed in a separate blast at the Bajour tribal agency incident.
In Balochistan, soon after the explosion the convoy of Chinese nationals sped past amid shooting.
The engineers are working on a mineral project in the area and they were going to the port city of Karachi, police said.
The bomb was planted near a stop, known as Gadani Stop, which is located in the main Bazar. The dead also included owners of nearby shops and people waiting at the bus stop, Afridi said.
Fifteen people were injured in the blast, who were shifted to civil Hospital in Karachi. Two injured persons died in Karachi hospital of injuries.
It was not known yet who carried out the attack but Islamic militants have been targeting Chinese during the past several weeks. The first provocation came when seven Chinese nationals including six women were abducted by the militant students of Lal Masjid in Islamabad last month which led to the government intensifying its crackdown on the mosque and madrassa leading to military raid on July 11.
After that militants killed three Chinese workers in Peshawar. The attacks prompted China to ask its close ally Pakistan to step up security for over 3,000 Chinese nationals working In Pakistan.
A number of Chinese work in different projects at Hub which was known to be a major industrial town in Balochistan.
Thursday's attacks were seen as a part of a spate of such attacks launched by Islamic militants in tribal areas of NWFP and also in Islamabad ever since the military crackdown on Lal Masjid here on July 11.
While 103 people, including 11 security personnel, were killed in raid in Lal Masjid, over 100 people were killed and scores injured in the spate of bomb blasts that rocked tribal areas of NWFP and Islamabad in the suicide bomb explosions and the attacks by militants.
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