SWAT – At least 14 persons including four security personnel, three workers of an NGO and a student were killed while 65 others got injured in a suicide attack outside the District Courts in Mingora on Saturday.
Several vehicles and a public library were also destroyed in the attack.
According to details, the suicide bomber was riding a rickshaw and was about twenty years old. He tried to reach the check-post of security forces but blew himself up outside the District Courts when the security personnel noticed him and fired gunshots at him. The explosion resulted in killings of 14 persons and 65 others including 6 policemen were injured. Some of the injured are stated to be in critical condition.
The deceased included Hazratullah, Jehanzeb, Qari Yousaf, Wahid Gul, Bakht Jamal, Nadir Shah, Khursheed, Aimal Khan, Akbar Khan and Umer Zarin. The injured included Anwar, Jumaraz, Roshan Ali, Mohammad Hussain, Shah Adil, Sufi Wahid Gul, Abdul Manan, Javed, Mohammad Gul, Obaidullah, Sajjad, Mian Gul, Arshad, Khursheed, Faisal Hayat, Gul Rahim, Haider Ali, Shtamand Khan, Bakht Jamal, Gul Naeem, Shahid Iqbal, Mohammad Qureshi, Ziaur Rehman, Mohammad Nazeer, Arshad, Ajab Khan and Jehanzeb Khan.
Soon after the incident, the security cordoned off the area, clamped curfew on Saidu Sharif Road and started relief activities. The injured were rushed to District Headquarters Hospital and Lady Reading Hospital. According to bomb disposal squad, almost 14 kilograms explosive material was used in the attack.
Head, legs and other body parts of the bomber were collected from the site of the blast and sent for DNA test.
All the main shopping centres and bazaars were closed down soon after the blast.
Agencies add: “Our men carried out these attacks and more strikes will continue all over the country because the entire Pakistan has become a colony of the United States,” Taliban spokesman Tariq Azam told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
“I saw a burning vehicle … at least five people, including some women, who burned to death,” a witness said. The road to Mingora’s main courthouse was blocked by concrete slabs, sandbags and barbed wire. The blast left two rickshaws twisted and a car burning. Windows were shattered in nearby buildings in Mingora.
The bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a building used by security forces in Saidu Sharif, on the edge of Mingora, where the military said last year it had quelled a Taliban uprising. “It was a suicide attack,” senior police official Qazi Jamil told AFP. “The suicide bomber was trying to enter the building and blew himself up after being stopped by police.”
A spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed his organisation was responsible for the attack, saying that more would follow as long as Army operations continued in tribal belt. “These people are fighting against us to please America. As long as they do not stop the military operation, we will carry out more such attacks,” spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Swat has been held up as a success in Pakistan’s fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants by local and US officials, who have praised the military for apparently ending a two-year local Taliban insurgency. The former ski and tourist resort, once favoured for its pristine natural beauty, slipped from Islamabad’s control in July 2007 after radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah mounted a violent campaign.