Taliban claim responsibility, say attack targeted tribal elders
The death toll from a suicide attack in a volatile border region of Pakistan climbed to 102 on Saturday, showing the militants’ continued ability to stage deadly strikes despite losing ground in army offensives.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack in Mohmand, a Pashtun region on the northwestern border with Afghanistan, where security forces have stepped up operations against militants in recent months.
Friday’s attack is the deadliest Pakistan has suffered since an attack on a market in Peshawar in October last year that killed 105.
Five children, aged 5 to 10, and several women were among the dead on Friday, and the toll rose after rescuers working throughout the night found more bodies in the rubble.
"We have recovered more bodies from the debris of dozens of shops that were razed to the ground by the blast and the number of dead has increased" to 102, said Rasool Khan, assistant political agent of Mohmand.
The bomber blew himself up outside Khan’s office.
Late on Friday, a TTP spokesman in Mohmand who identified himself as Ikramullah Mohmand, said anti-Taliban tribal elders from various peace committees who had come to Khan’s office were the target.
According to him the elders were planning to raise a lashkar, or tribal force, to fight the Taliban. A senior elder and two others were killed in the attack.
"We will attack such gatherings in future also," Mohmand said.
Among nearly 80 wounded were several people displaced by fighting between security forces and militants, who were collecting relief goods near the blast side.
Multiple security challenges
The latest militant attack underscored multiple security challenges facing nuclear-armed U.S. ally Pakistan, whose support is vital in attempts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan, where U.S.-led NATO troops are fighting a raging Taliban insurgency.
The military has made progress over the past year when they pushed militants out of the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad. In October the army began an offensive in the militants’ South Waziristan bastion on the Afghan border.
The offensive was extended to Orakzai in March as many of the militants who fled the South Waziristan operation took refuge there and in Mohmand. Hundreds of militants have since been killed in air strikes in the two regions.
But militants have proven their ability to bounce back, responding with a barrage of bomb attacks in towns and cities, killing hundreds of people.
Pakistani leaders this week called for a landmark national conference to develop a strategy to counter the Islamist militant threat after a twin suicide attack killed 43 people at a shrine in Lahore on July 2.
Despite praising Pakistan’s efforts to fight homegrown militants, the unabated violence is a source of worry for the United States, which also wants Islamabad to go after Afghan militants who cross the border to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan.