MOSCOW, September 23 (RIA Novosti) – At least three people are dead and 13 wounded after a suicide vehicle bomber struck a convoy carrying a senior official in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, AFP reports.
The bomber detonated himself near a convoy of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Peshawar. The Pakistani police reported that a brigadier general was travelling in the convoy; he was unharmed, informs the Wall Street Journal.
“We were a little lucky that it wasn’t a populated area, and there was no building nearby”, a senior police official in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province [of which Peshawar is the capital] Shafqat Malik said.
A vehicle was packed with 45 kg of explosive material. “We have collected evidence from the site and have a lead. We’ll soon be able to say more about the attack”, Malik said, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
The three people killed include a woman, a civilian and a soldier of the Frontier Corps, according to a spokesperson from Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, CNN reported.
Pakistani military forces have been fighting militants, linked to Taliban and Al-Qaeda, in the semi-autonomous tribal areas near Peshawar. For a long time, these tribal areas have been a retreat places for militants. After an attack on Karachi airport in June, the Pakistani army began a push to clear the militants from the North Waziristan tribal area. The Pakistani army has reported it has lost 86 of its own soldiers, while destroying more than a thousand militants since the start of the current operation, according to AFP.
