By DPA
Islamabad : Three days after Pakistani troops wiped out the last militant defenders of Islamabad’s Red Mosque, a suicide bomber Saturday killed 24 soldiers and injured 29 as he rammed an explosives-laden car into an army convoy in the country’s northwest tribal region.
“The attack targeted a convoy transporting troops of the Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps (paramilitary force) at around 11.20 a.m. (0620 GMT),” the military’s chief spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told DPA.
The soldiers were travelling from the town of Razmak to Miranshah, the administrative capital of the North Waziristan semi-autonomous tribal district that borders Afghanistan.
Two vehicles in the convoy were completely destroyed in the bombing. Casualties were airlifted to nearby towns for medical treatment.
The spokesman added that security at military installations and during troop movements has been intensified in the wake of the action at the Red Mosque and adjoining madrassa religious school. According to the government, 102 people died after troops lay siege to the site on July 3 and in the storming operation which began last Tuesday.
Attacks on the security forces and administrators have increased in the tribal areas and Pakistan’s restive North-West Frontier Province where extremists have called for revenge attacks in the wake of the bloodshed.
Tens of thousands of citizens also protested in Pakistani cities Friday over President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to use force to end the long confrontation with the hardline clerics that ran the complex.
In excerpts of his will that were published by local media, the mosque’s slain deputy chief cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi said: “We have a firm belief in God that our blood will lead to a revolution in the country.”