Woman suicide bomber kills 40 queuing for food aid in Pakistan
A woman suicide bomber dressed in a burka killed at least 41 people queuing for emergency food rations in Pakistan's terrorist-riddled tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
9:40AM GMT 25 Dec 2010
Police later confirmed that the attacker was female – making it the first time a suicide attack has been carried out by a woman in Pakistan.
Witnesses said she was stopped at a security checkpoint as United Nations officials distributed aid in Khar, the main town of Bajaur, which the Pakistani army this year claimed to have cleared of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighter.
She hurled a hand grenade before detonating an explosive-laden vest as she was being searched.
More than 1,000 people – mostly displaced by fighting elsewhere in the tribal areas – had gathered to wait for food.
"At least 41 people are dead and more than 60 wounded in the suicide bombing," said Sohail Khan, a senior tribal administration official.
Pakistan's military launched operations in Bajaur in August 2008 and have repeatedly claimed to have eliminated the Islamist militant threat.
The country's northwest tribal belt is a stronghold of Islamist groups, including home-grown jihadi cells as well as extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime at the end of 2001.
American military commanders in Afghanistan have repeatedly expressed frustration that Pakistan has not done more to rid its rugged frontier of al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked groups, such as the Haqqani Network which is able to launch attacks on international forces from their havens across the border.
Police and local administration officials confirmed the attack in Khar was carried out by a woman, according to their initial examination of the bomber's remains.
The local administration imposed an indefinite curfew in Khar, while security forces patrolled streets and launched a search operation in the area, officials said.
About 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since 2007, when security forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad, turning terrorist networks against a regime that had previously offered tacit – or at times overt – support to Jihadi groups.
However, Pakistan vehemently denies accusations that it is not doing enough to eradicate the Taliban in the northwest, saying more than 2,400 troops have been killed in fighting Islamist militants from 2002 until April this year.
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