Suicide bomber targets Pakistan anti-terrorism police
The attacker, carrying a box of sweets, is the only fatality in a blast that wrecked a barracks in a high-security enclave. Elsewhere in the country, a roadside bomb kills 10.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A suicide bomber bearing a box of sweets managed to penetrate the most heavily secured police enclave in the capital today, wrecking a residential building that housed anti-terrorism police and injuring half a dozen officers.
Elsewhere in the country, 10 people were killed when a roadside bomb, apparently planted by insurgents, hit a police bus transporting prisoners.
By the standard of recent attacks in Pakistani cities and towns, the toll in the bombing of the police barracks was light: The bomber was the only fatality. But the bold strike against such a well-fortified target was seen as an emphatic show of defiance by Islamic militants.
The box of sweets, delivered just before the blast was set off, contained a note demanding an end to military offensives in the tribal lands along the Afghan border where Al Qaeda and Taliban militants have found sanctuary, intelligence officials said. The note was written in Pashtu, the language spoken in the tribal areas.
The attack, which sheared the corner walls off the three-story brick barracks deep inside the sprawling police compound, was symbolic not only in location but timing. It came as Pakistani lawmakers were receiving a second day of closed-door briefings from senior military officials about Pakistan's ongoing confrontation with insurgents.
Among the senior officials appearing before lawmakers were army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the incoming head of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, the main spy agency.
One reason that so few people were injured in the bombing was that nearly all the anti-terrorism police had been deployed throughout the capital to guard against attacks during the parliamentary session. The city was on extremely high alert, with many major streets cordoned off and blast barriers erected in front of government buildings and other official installations.
Some analysts saw the special parliamentary session as the first real effort on the part of the country's new government to come to grips with formulating a coherent strategy for confronting the insurgents, who have not only staged a relentless campaign of suicide attacks inside Pakistan, but send fighters to attack Western troops inside Afghanistan. The parliamentary session was to continue Monday.
"It could take some time for a consensus to crystallize, but recent events have made it impossible for anyone to ignore the extreme seriousness of the situation," said military analyst Nasim Zehra.
