11 killed in Pakistan bomb, anti-Taliban head dies
By Lehaz Ali (AFP) 2 hours ago
PESHAWAR, Pakistan A suicide car bomber struck near a local mayor's house in Pakistan's Peshawar city Sunday, killing 11 people including the one-time rebel backer turned anti-Taliban crusader, police said.
The bomber also wounded 36 people outside a property of Mayor Abdul Malik on the outskirts of the northwest city troubled by Islamist militancy. Malik, one of a number of city mayors, had raised a militia against Taliban rebels.
Pakistan is currently waging an offensive against insurgents in their northwest mountain hideouts, incurring the wrath of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group, which has retaliated with a wave of deadly attacks.
"The suicide bomber came in a car and exploded it when the mayor was standing with some visitors outside his guesthouse near the local livestock market," district administration chief Sahibzada Anis told AFP.
"Eleven people have been killed and 36 others wounded. Nine of them are in a critical condition," Anis added.
Hospital officials said that two children were among the dead.
Malik, mayor of Adizai suburb on Peshawar's outskirts since 2006, once had close links to the hardline Taliban movement, but switched sides and had raised a local force to battle the Islamist extremists on the fringes of the city.
"Abdul Malik and a commander of the local anti-Taliban force are also among the dead," Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali Khan told AFP.
"Malik passed away on the way to hospital."
An AFP reporter at the scene described the roads littered with the wreckage of cars and the corpses of cattle killed at the livestock market.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of suicide blasts killing more than 350 people since early October. In the deadliest attack in two years, a car bombing killed 118 people on October 28 in Peshawar, the northwest capital.
Islamabad has blamed the attacks on TTP militants avenging both the military offensive against them and the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone missile strike in the rugged northwest tribal belt in August.
Pakistan launched a fierce air and ground offensive into South Waziristan on October 17, with some 30,000 troops backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships laying siege to the Pakistan Taliban's bolt-holes.
The semi-autonomous tribal belt has become a bastion for Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels after the 2001 US-led invasion drove them out of Afghanistan, and Washington says the region is one of the world's most dangerous zones.
The long-awaited assault into the tribal region came after a spring offensive in and around the northwestern Swat valley, which the government declared a success in July. However, sporadic outbreaks of violence continue.
Military officials have encouraged local officials and tribal elders to raise militias -- known locally as lashkars -- to keep the rebels at bay.
