Officials: Suicide attack kills 11 in NW Pakistan

[March 26, 2009]  DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber struck a restaurant in volatile northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 11 people including pro-government fighters opposed to the country's top Taliban commander, intelligence officials said.

Pockets of northwest Pakistan are strongholds for Taliban, al-Qaida and other armed groups, not all of whom get along.

Even as Pakistan has battled militants, and the U.S. has carried out dozens of missile attacks against them -- including a suspected American strike that killed eight Wednesday -- various armed factions have also fought one another.

The attack Thursday morning occurred just outside the South Waziristan tribal region near the town of Tank at a roadside restaurant where some two dozen fighters loyal to Turkistan Bitani were eating, two intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

Several other people were wounded in the attack, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to the speak publicly to the media.

The Pakistani government has encouraged various leaders in the northwest to set up armed militias, sometimes called "Peace Committees," to ward off the Taliban. Bitani, who has led one such pro-government faction, was not present, the officials said.

Local resident Ibrahim Khan told The Associated Press by telephone that he was not far away from the restaurant when he saw some armed men trying to capture a young man.

"As the armed men grabbed that young man, he exploded a bomb," Khan said. He said he saw 11 bodies and at least 15 wounded people and helped them get into vehicles to head to hospitals.

South Waziristan is the stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, the top leader of the Pakistani Taliban and a Bitani rival.

The tribal region also was the target of Wednesday's alleged U.S. missile strike, whose death toll included several foreigners, according to two other intelligence officials said. Wednesday's strike damaged two vehicles near Makeen, a town that borders Afghanistan.

The strike came as President Barack Obama's administration prepares to unveil a new strategy to quell Islamist insurgents threatening Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.

American officials have indicated that attacks along Pakistan's un-policed western frontier, apparently carried out by unmanned CIA aircraft and stepped up since last year, will continue despite protests from the Pakistani government.

The officials discussed the missile strike on condition of anonymity because they also were not authorized to speak publicly to the media. Reporters cannot verify reports from the area because authorities and militants limit access.

U.S. officials say the strikes have killed a string of militant leaders and put al-Qaida on the defensive in an area considered a possible hiding place for its fugitive leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.

However, the Pakistani government argues that the tactic is counterproductive because it kills civilians, stokes anti-American feeling in the Islamic world's only nuclear-armed country and undermines its own efforts to isolate extremists.

[Associated Press; By ISHTIAQ MAHSUD]

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