Suicide Attack in Pakistan Kills 17    09/06 09:52

   LAKKI MARWAT, Pakistan (AP) -- A Taliban suicide bomber detonated a car in 
an alley behind a police station in a strategically important town in 
northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 17 police and civilians in an 
explosion that shattered the station and neighboring homes.

   About 40 people were wounded in the attack in Lakki Marwat, which sits on 
the main road between Punjab province, Pakistan's largest and most prosperous, 
and the North and South Waziristan tribal regions.

   A Pakistani army offensive pushed many militants out of South Waziristan in 
October. The militants still control much of North Waziristan, where U.S. drone 
aircraft have been conducting a campaign of targeted killings.

   Hours after the attack, officials said a suspected U.S. missile strike had 
killed three alleged militants in North Waziristan, home to the Haqqani 
network, a militant group battling U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

   Two Pakistani intelligence officials told The Associated Press that a 
missile hit a vehicle in the Datta Khel area on the Afghan border Monday 
evening. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not 
authorized to release the information

   In Lakki Marwat, rescue workers and police officials were digging through 
rubble at the station, police official Ghulam Mohammad Khan said. Nine police 
officers, four adult civilians and four children going to school were slain in 
the attack.

   Police official Liaquat Ali said 45 police were in the building when the 
bomber struck.

   "I said my morning prayers and we went to sleep, then suddenly there was a 
big bang. All the debris fell on us," police official Ikramullah Khan told The 
Associated Press from a bed in a nearby hospital, where many of the wounded lay 
wailing in pain as relatives comforted each other.

   Emergency workers and local residents used cranes to move the rubble of the 
mostly destroyed police station. Books and a schoolbag could be seen in the 
wreckage and the twisted frames of a motorcycle and a car sat nearby. A 
neighborhood shop and mosque also were partly destroyed.

   The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they 
targeted the police for encouraging residents to set up militias to fight the 
militants --- known locally as lashkars. The group pledged to carry out 
additional attacks unless the militias disbanded.

   "After the police, we will attack those active in forming anti-Taliban 
lashkars if they have not given up their activities," Taliban spokesman 
Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed 
location.

   The police chief of Lakki Marwat district was killed in a suicide bombing 
several months ago and militants have carried out a string of attacks in the 
area since then.

   In recent days, militants have launched attacks across the nation aimed at 
destabilizing the country and weakening a civilian government already 
struggling with a massive flooding that has displaced millions and caused 
widespread destruction.

   The deadliest have targeted minority Shiite Muslims. A suicide bombing 
killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in the southwestern city of 
Quetta on Friday. Two days earlier, a triple suicide attack killed 35 people at 
a Shiite ceremony in the eastern city of Lahore.

   Both were claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, whose commander Qari Hussain 
Mehsud threatened Friday that his group would wage imminent attacks in the U.S. 
and Europe.

   On the same day, Pakistani intelligence officials said two suspected U.S. 
missile strikes had killed at least seven people in North Waziristan, which is 
largely controlled by the Haqqani network, one of the main groups battling 
Americans in neighboring Afghanistan.


(KA)