ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN, AND PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN — A powerful car bomb blast at a movie house in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed six people Friday and injured 75, raising fears here that gains made by Pakistani troops against Taliban militants entrenched in the volatile Swat Valley will be answered with a wave of attacks in urban areas.
The explosion outside the Tasveer Mahal cinema on one of Peshawar's most traffic-choked streets was the second in a week in the provincial capital. On Saturday, a car bomb killed 13 people.
The army's offensive in the Swat Valley and surrounding districts in the country's northwest appears to be gaining support from many people weary of the Taliban insurgency and its spread beyond the tribal areas that border Afghanistan. That public support has been buoyed by advances that the Pakistani military says it has made on Taliban strongholds.
Military officials say they have cleared the Buner and Lower Dir districts of Taliban fighters, and have since encircled Swat's main city, Mingora, where Taliban militants remained holed up. They also have begun destroying concrete bunkers and networks of tunnels that Taliban militants had built in towns and villages they used as bases.
Increasingly, however, Pakistanis have worried that the offensive may trigger retaliatory attacks from the Taliban, including suicide bomb blasts and car bombings in major cities.
"Such incidents will increase in coming days if the government does not stop the operation in Swat and change its policy," said Mohammed Iqbal, a Peshawar political activist.
Support for the offensive is also tempered by the burgeoning humanitarian crisis caused by the exodus of nearly 2 million people fleeing the fighting. Many of the fleeing Pakistanis have sought refuge with relatives or friends, but more than 160,000 have jammed into tent camps outside the northwestern city of Mardan as well as Peshawar and on the outskirts of Islamabad, the capital.
People escaping the conflict are also appearing in larger numbers in cities as far away as the southern port metropolis of Karachi and Lahore, near the eastern border with India.
Amid sweltering heat, overwhelmed aid workers are struggling to supply adequate food and healthcare to the throngs at the camps.
