Stepping up its offensive in a backlash to the storming of Lal Masjid, suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda militants on Sunday carried out a series of suicide bombings in Pakistan's restive North West Frontier Province (NWFP) killing 41 people, most of them security personnel, and scrapped a peace pact with the government.
The country’s volatile tribal areas turned into virtual battle zones following three separate suicide attacks.
A suicide bomber struck a police station in the city of Dera Ismail Khan when recruitment of policemen was going on, District Police Officer Gul Afzal Afridi said.
“At least 26 policemen were killed in the blast,” local officials said.
Though there were no claims, the attack was suspected to have been carried out by local pro-Taliban militants who owed allegiance to radical clerics of Lal Masjid.
Earlier in the day, two more suicide bomb attacks directed against troops in Swat area in NWFP on Sunday killing 15 people, including 13 army personnel and injuring 52.
“The law enforcement agencies are facing trouble in stopping the suicide bombings,” Pakistan Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said. “The suicide attacks in Dera Ismail Khan and Swat valley have linkages to the Lal Masjid operation,” he told reporters here.
Three improvised devices exploded when the army convoy was heading to Matta, a town, some 25 kilometres from Mingora, the largest city in Swat valley, Pakistan Defence Spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said adding four civilians were also killed in the blasts.
Sunday’s attacks came a day after a suicide bomber had crashed his car into a convoy of security forces in North Waziristan tribal region on Saturday, killing 24 soldiers.
The government had sent soldiers to Swat and several other areas to deal with the armed supporters of the Lal Masjid in the area.
Adding to the problems of Pakistani authorities, the Taliban announced it was scrapping a nearly year-long peace agreement they had signed with the army in September last year and threatening to launch guerrilla attacks on security forces in the North Waziristan tribal region.
A Taliban commander in Waziristan Hafiz Gul Bahadar had asked his men to launch attacks on troops and other security forces in the region, spokesman Abdullah Farhad said.