Two suicide bomb attacks killed at least 37 people in Pakistan yesterday, as a militant backlash intensified following the army's storming of radical mosque in Islamabad earlier this month.
A wave of bomb attacks since a siege and assault on the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque complex, a militant stronghold in the capital, has swept across Pakistan, killing more than 160.
At least 30 people were killed yesterday when a car bomber rammed into a police van in the southern town of Hub. All seven policemen in the van and 23 bystanders were killed. Twenty-eight people were wounded.
A vehicle carrying seven Chinese workers involved in mining activities was nearby when the bombing happened, but fortunately no one was hurt, the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad said.
Another seven people, including policemen, were killed in a car bomb attack in the far northwestern city of Hangu early yesterday.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi sent a message of condolence to Pakistani foreign minister yesterday to express the Chinese government and people's condolence to Pakistan on the attacks.
The attack in Hub, which lies at the border of Baluchistan and Sindh provinces, was the biggest - and the first in southern Pakistan - during the recent wave of violence.
"I saw flames all around me after a big bang. It appeared as if cars were flying in the air," Mohammad Raheem, a 17-year-old laborer, who was injured in the blast, said in a hospital in Karachi.
"There were cries and screams all around. After that I don't know what happened. I just fainted."
Police suspected that the latest attack was part of a backlash against the storming of the Islamabad mosque. "We believe it is part of the recent attacks carried out by Islamist militants," said Tariq Masood Khosa, police chief of Baluchistan.
President Pervez Musharraf said on Wednesday he had no intention of declaring a state of emergency to counter the growing insecurity, and gave assurances that elections due later this year would go ahead as planned.
A cleric in the southern city voiced fears of civil war if Musharraf stepped up his fight on militants in the northwest.
"Musharraf has chosen a dangerous path," said Mufti Muhammad Naeem of Karachi's largest Islamic school in the aftermath of the Islamabad mosque bloodshed. "I think this situation could blow up in an all-out civil war."
The government said 102 people had been killed in the storming of the Lal Masjid. Many victims came from the northwest, most of them followers of cleric brothers advocating a militant brand of Islam reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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