11 Killed as Suicide Bomber targets police checkpoint in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle struck a crowded police checkpoint on the outskirts of the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing 11 people in an attack claimed by the Taliban.


Another 21 people were wounded in the blast, which took place on a road leading to neighbouring Afghanistan, police official Iqbal Khan said. Peshawar is on the edge of Pakistan's volatile tribal regions, a stronghold of the Taliban and other Islamic militants.

Khan said the dead include four police and seven civilians, including two children and a local journalist, Mahboob Shah Afridi, who was president of Tribal Union of Journalists in the neighboring Khyber region. A local Pakistani Taliban commander, Maqbool Dawar, claimed the attack, which took place as a local police chief arrived at the checkpoint.

Dawar said it was in response to the killing of his comrades by security forces. Militant violence has declined since Pakistan launched a wide-ranging military offensive in North Waziristan, a tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, in the summer of 2014.
  ubalert.com
  19/1/16
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