Pakistan suicide bomber kills 14

17/03/2009| IslamWeb

A suicide bomber blew up his car outside a restaurant in Pakistan's garrison city of Rawalpindi, killing 14 people and wounding 18 others, police said Tuesday.

Officials said the bomber had probably been targeting a mass protest which was scheduled for Monday in Rawalpindi and the capital Islamabad but was then called off after the government vowed to reinstate the country's top judge.

"Fifteen people have been killed and 18 injured," said Rawalpindi regional police commander Nasir Durrani, including the bomber in the death toll.

In an initial toll, police said eight people were killed in the attack late Monday, which took place near a taxi stand in a crowded, working-class area of the city, which neighbors Islamabad.

"We had prior information that there could be an attack during the 'long march' in Rawalpindi and Islamabad," interior ministry chief Rehman Malik told reporters.

"The people who did this are trying to destabilize Pakistan."

The attack in Rawalpindi, the city in which Pakistan's powerful military is headquartered, destroyed several nearby cars and threw the area into panic.

The dead were taken to different hospitals in the city.

"Four bodies were brought to the hospital and one injured person," Doctor Mohammed Zia said at the Benazir Bhutto hospital in Rawalpindi.

"The fourth body is in pieces. An arm is the only intact piece," he added.

Pakistan, a key US ally, has been hit by some 200 suicide and bomb attacks that have killed more than 1,600 people since government forces fought radical gunmen holed up in a mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.

Much of the violence has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan, where the army has been bogged down fighting Taliban hardliners and Al-Qaeda extremists, who fled there after the 2001 US-led invasion of neighboring Afghanistan.

The so-called 'long march' was called by lawyers and political opposition activists to press demands for President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who was ousted in 2007 under emergency rule.

In a major climbdown, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced at dawn Monday that the government would restore Chaudhry and end its crackdown on the protests.

Main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif welcomed the announcement and promptly called off the mass protest march.

PHOTO CAPTION

Pakistani security officials inspect a damaged passenger van after a suicide blast in Rawalpindi.

AFP