http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25601377-2703,00.html
Pakistan capital hit by Taliban bomber Amanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent | June 08, 2009 Article from: The Australian TALIBAN militants have taken their campaign of terror back to Pakistan's capital with a deadly suicide bomb attack on a police building. The Islamic extremists were also suspected to be behind the weekend assassination of two senior aides to Sufi Muhammad, the hardline cleric who negotiated the failed peace deal between the government and the Taliban in the Swat Valley. That deal, which exchanged peace for the imposition of sharia law, is widely seen to have allowed the Taliban to consolidate its control of large swaths of the North West Frontier Province. Yesterday's suicide bomb attack against a police emergency helpline centre in a suburban area of Islamabad killed two officers and wounded at least six others. Militants targeted the same service in the eastern Punjab city of Lahore less than two weeks ago, killing 24 people. The Taliban have stepped up their attacks in cities around the country since the government launched its military offensive against insurgents in NWFP in late April. More than a dozen bomb blasts have killed more than 100 people, with serious attacks in the NWFP provincial capital, Peshawar, the country's cultural capital, Lahore, and Islamabad. The strikes, combined with the Taliban's steady march towards the capital, appear to have shifted public sympathy away from the insurgents. On Friday, a suicide bomber killed 38 people in a packed mosque in Upper Dir, a neighbouring district to Swat where the military has concentrated its efforts against insurgents. That prompted a revenge attack on neighbouring Taliban strongholds yesterday by hundreds of local residents. The Islamabad strike was the first attack on the capital in more than two months. A suicide bomber killed eight paramilitary police stationed on the edge of an upmarket residential area in early April. Witnesses and security officials said guards opened fire on the bomber as he approached the police building early yesterday. "First one bullet was fired at him and then another bullet, which probably triggered the explosion," one official said. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari warned that acts of terror would not deter the government from eliminating militancy within its borders. "The militants who are on the run have become desperate but they will not escape their ignoble end," Mr Zardari said in a statement. "If anything, barbaric acts like the Saturday evening (local time) attack on Rescue 15 building in Islamabad only strengthens the resolve of the people and the law-enforcing agencies to wipe out extremism and militancy from Pakistan." The attack came hours after suspected Taliban militants struck a military convoy transporting two high value detainees to Peshawar for interrogation. Both men were killed in the blast, along with one soldier. Muhammad Maulana Alam and Ameer Izzat Khan were senior advisers to Sufi Mohammad, the father-in-law of the brutal Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah. It was unclear whether the attackers were attempting to free the prisoners, or if they knew the two men were in the convoy. But Pakistan military spokesman Athar Abbas said it was possible the men were killed to prevent them from revealing the locations of Mohammad and Fazlullah. Meanwhile, the Pentagon appeared to confirm one of South Asia's worst-kept secrets - that Pakistan used the billions of dollars in aid funnelled from the Bush administration to bolster its military machine for a war against India. Additional reporting: Agencies [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
