Bomb on passenger truck kills 7 in NW Pakistan

[August 17, 2009]  PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- A bomb exploded on a truck at a fuel station in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing seven people, police said, while the Taliban claimed responsibility for two weekend suicide attacks in a valley recently retaken by the army.

Gunmen also assassinated the leader of a feared Sunni sectarian group, triggering rioting in three southern cities.

Pakistan is battling al-Qaida and Taliban militants seeking to topple its secular, pro-Western government. It has been bracing for possible revenge attacks following the reported death of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a CIA missile strike Aug. 5 close to the northwestern border with Afghanistan.

Three children were among the dead in Monday's truck bombing, which wounded at least 15. Television footage showed bloodstained clothes and sandals scattered around the station in Charsada district, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) outside the main northwestern city of Peshawar, a militant hub with roads that lead into Mehsud territory.

Police officer Sifwat Ghayur said a timed explosive device fashioned from a mortar had been loaded onto the truck in a package marked "medicine" without the driver's knowledge.

The truck functioned as a taxi service between towns. Six of the dead were believed to have been passengers.

Also in the northwest, a Taliban spokesman in the Swat Valley said the group was responsible for two suicide bombings on the police and the army over the weekend that killed seven security forces.

"It is a reaction to the killings of our men in army custody," Muslim Khan told The Associated Press by phone. Residents reported finding 18 bodies -- most identified as Taliban -- in different areas of Swat on Saturday.

The spokesman said the attacks were timed to coincide with the visit of U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, who had been scheduled to travel to Swat over the weekend but canceled, citing heavy rain.

An army spokesman Saturday denied any government involvement in the killings, saying Swat residents may have taken revenge for the Taliban's harsh, monthslong rule in the valley, when they burned down schools and killed anyone who opposed their hard-line interpretation of Islam.

The militants were driven out by an army offensive earlier this year.

Pakistan also suffers periodic spasms of violence between its Sunni and Shiite Muslim sects. In the southern commercial capital of Karachi on Monday, supporters of banned Sunni sectarian group Sipah-e-Sahaba rioted after its leader, Ali Sher Haideri, was gunned down in his car that morning.

Haideri was killed along with a guard in Khairpur town in Sindh province, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) northeast of Karachi, officer Pir Mohammad Shah said.

Haideri, said to be in his 50s, was the spiritual leader of Sipah, which has been blamed for attacks against the country's minority Shiites, whom they regard as heretics. The U.S. State Department designated the group a terrorist organization in 2003.

Angered at his death, dozens of Sunni youths torched a bus and a van and threw stones at other vehicles, according to Abdul Majid Dasti, a senior police officer in Karachi. He said police lobbed tear gas canisters and dispersed the mob, but protesters later regrouped and set fire to a gas station.

Some rioters also fired shots, wounding two people on a nearby bridge. Police arrested four people, Dasti said.

Rioting and protests were also reported in Kandh Kot and Khairpur, two other cities in Sindh province, senior police officer Sanaullah Abbasi said, but no major injuries were reported.

Police said Haideri was killed over a personal dispute, but retaliatory violence can spring up between Sunnis and Shiites in the wake of such attacks.

Pakistan banned Sipah-e-Sahaba after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as part of efforts to purge the country of extremism, but the group still operates more or less openly. Al-Qaida and the Taliban are also extremist Sunni groups and share Sipah's anti-Shiite stance.

[Associated Press; By RIAZ KHAN]

Associated Press writer Ashraf Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.

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