By DPA
Islamabad : At least 20 people, including 14 soldiers, were killed Sunday as militants attacked a Pakistani military convoy with two suicide bombes and a landmine in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), police and military officials said.
“Two suicide bombers rammed their cars packed with explosives into a military convoy at a bus stand in Matta area of Swat district around 07.30 (02:30 GMT), and a third landmine explosion occurred simultaneously,” military’s spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said.
“At least 14 soldiers and four civilians were killed in the blasts,” a local police investigator said on the condition of anonymity.
Military spokesman, however, confirmed the deaths of 11 soldiers and three civilians, adding that two military vehicles and one bus carrying security personnel were destroyed in the blasts. Many among injured 39 soldiers are in critical condition.
The civilians, including three of the same family, died when the blasts demolished two houses and damaged four others. Two charred bodies of the suspected suicide bombers were also found on the scene.
Security forces cordoned off the area following the attack, while some of the seriously injured were being moved by helicopters to the hospitals in the military hospitals in NWFP and central Punjab province.
The attack came a day after a suicide bomber killed 24 soldiers and injured 29 others in country’s North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
The suspected Islamic militants have intensified attacks on Pakistani security forces since the last week’s Islamabad Red Mosque storm operation, which according to the government killed around 100 people.
Supporters of Red Mosque, including members of banned extremist organization Nifaze Sharaiat-I-Mohammed in the Swat district, have vowed to take revenge for the operation, which they claim took the lives of hundreds of students.
Maulana Sami ul Haq, a pro-Taliban leader in NWFP with a strong following, warned during 10-day long siege of the Red Mosque: “The issue, if not resolved right now, will set off an unstoppable series of suicide attacks and bombings across the country.”
Angry opposition rallies were held in several cities on 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.”
Military spokesmen declined to comment on whether the two deadly attacks on security forces during the last 24 hours were linked with the last week operation at the Islamabad mosque.