AP:
Bombings targeted a Pakistani police station and set a NATO fuel convoy ablaze Sunday, killing 16 cadets in the northwest’s Swat Valley and threatening the supply line to international forces in Afghanistan in a separate attack near the border.
The two blasts hours apart and hundreds of miles from each other came as Pakistani officials said the Taliban were ramping up strikes to avenge recent setbacks, including the loss of territory to the military and the death of their top leader in a CIA missile strike near the Afghan border.
Pakistan’s military has in recent months intensified its fight against the al-Qaida-linked extremists, who threaten stability in the nuclear-armed nation and are suspected of helping plot attacks against U.S. and NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan.
At least 16 cadets died Sunday after a suicide bomber sneaked into the courtyard where they were training in Swat’s main town of Mingora and detonated his explosives, local government official Atifur Rehman said. It was the deadliest attack since an army offensive ended Taliban rule there.
…The other blast Sunday ripped through a line of trucks ferrying fuel to NATO troops in Afghanistan, setting several oil tankers ablaze at a backed-up border crossing in southwestern Baluchistan province, police said.
The blast appeared to be the second terrorist attack in a week to target a border crossing.
NYT:
A group of new police officers, recently hired to patrol local communities, was performing training exercises when the suicide bomber struck at the police station in Mingora, the information minister for the North-West Frontier Province, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said.
The attack came as the Pakistani Army has asserted that it now controls most of the Swat Valley and that the Taliban militants who held sway there for nearly two years have been beaten back to only a few enclaves. On Saturday, the army said it had destroyed a suicide bomber training camp in Charbagh, six miles from Mingora, strafing it with helicopter gunships.
Anyway, the problem with Pakistan remains the same: they don’t want really to eliminate the Taliban, claiming that would be “too difficult”. They are also “worried” about Hakimullah’s appointment as Taliban’s chief, because he is “very cruel”. Meanwhile, US has accused Pakistan of “illegally modifying U.S.-made missiles to expand its ability to hit land-based targets“, which would constitute a threat to India, and Pakistan has rejected any US aid if it’s linked to an increased suprevision of Pakistani nuclear arsenal, even if there are sufficient proofs of it being targeted and a no. 1 among AQ’s priorities.
