Bomb targeted at U.S. vehicles injures 13 in Pakistan city
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – A bombing targeted a pair of American consulate vehicles in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, a U.S. official said, and Pakistani authorities said the attack injured 13 people.
Hours after the attack, there were conflicting accounts about how it happened and how many people had been killed. Alberto Rodriguez, a U.S. embassy spokesman, said a suicide bomber on a motorbike detonated alongside one of the vehicles, and that two Americans inside had sustained minor injuries.
Peshawar Police Chief Liaqat Ali Khan, however, said it was a car bombing, and that one uninvolved Pakistani motorcylist was killed. Hospital officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said 13 people were injured, and two were foreigners.
The Pakistani Taliban, an al-Qaeda affiliate that had vowed to avenge Osama bin Laden’s killing by U.S. forces on May 2, claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported. A Taliban spokesman said the group would target the diplomatic staff of all countries belonging to NATO, which leads the coalition in next-door Afghanistan.
Last Friday, the militant organization said it had carried out a double-bombing that killed nearly 80 Pakistani paramilitary recruits outside Peshawar.
Friday’s blast occurred on a main artery in University Town, an area of Peshawar where diplomats and other foreigners typically reside. The bomber detonated his explosives after pulling up alongside one of two U.S. vehicles stopped at an intersection, Rodriguez said. The Americans inside the other vehicle were uninjured, and that car was not damaged, he said.
The vehicles were making a routine trip to and from the U.S. consulate in a convoy, and neither was carrying a senior U.S. official, Rodriguez told the Associated Press.
Television footage showed one dented and partially charred white sport utility vehicle. It appeared to be armored, as many official U.S. vehicles in Pakistan are.
Peshawar, which borders Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas, has been the site of some of the nation’s bloodiest militant attacks, as well as previous strikes against U.S. targets.
Last year, a gun-and-bomb attack on the U.S. consulate there left at least seven Pakistanis dead. In August 2008, the U.S. consul general evaded an assassination attempt in University Town. Two months later, a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development was gunned down in the same neighorhood.
As the U.S. commando plan to capture or kill bin Laden in Abbottabad unfolded, several U.S. consular workers in Peshawar were pulled back to Islamabad, the capital. In the wake of Friday’s attack, Rodriguez said there would be “very heightened security” for the U.S. mission in Peshawar, but he declined to say what measures would be taken.
Khan reported from Peshawar
(source:.washingtonpost.com)
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