More than 50 dead after suicide attack on Pakistani weapons plant
Taliban claims responsibility for the bombing, another sign of a determined insurgency facing the government after the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Suicide bombers struck the country's biggest munitions complex today, killing more than 50 people, injuring at least 70 others and underscoring the lethal urgency of the threat posed by Islamic militants.
Pakistan's Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the bombing, about 20 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. Workers leaving the weapons plant after their shifts accounted for nearly all the casualties, but the assailants may also have tried to penetrate the tightly guarded compound, police said.
The attack showed that even with the departure this week of President Pervez Musharraf, who resigned Monday rather than face impeachment, Pakistan's civilian government still confronts a determined insurgency.
And like militants across the border in Afghanistan, Pakistan's Taliban appear to be becoming better organized, better armed and capable of wreaking havoc with large-scale attacks on major government and military installations.
Today's bombing was the single deadliest strike blamed on Islamic insurgents since an attack on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's homecoming convoy last October killed more than 150 people. Bhutto herself was assassinated two months later.
Television news channels showed chaotic scenes from the attack at the sprawling complex in Wah, which houses 15 separate arms factories and employs more than 20,000 workers. Witnesses described a frantic impromptu rescue effort, with people loading the injured into private cars and even onto motorbikes to rush them to the nearest hospital.
Maulvi Omar, who claims to speak for militant commander Baitullah Mahsud, told Pakistani journalists the strike was in retribution for offensives by government forces in the tribal agency of Bajur, near the Afghan border, and elsewhere in the country's northwest.
Omar threatened more suicide attacks in urban areas such as the capital and other big cities. Last year, militants staged such strikes at a rate of more than one a week, but they had tapered off this year after the new civilian government took office in March and signaled willingness to negotiate with some militant leaders, including Mahsud.
Musharraf, on the other hand, had refused to negotiate with the insurgents, and was a hated symbol to them of Pakistan's alliance with the United States against the Taliban and al Qaeda. The ex-general survived several assassination attempts.
