By DPA,
Islamabad : Two people were killed and at least 20 wounded Friday in a foiled car bomb attack on a military camp close to a key road tunnel in Pakistan’s violence-plagued North West Frontier Province, officials said.
The incident occurred near the lawless town Darra Adam Khel, 45 km south of the provincial capital Peshawar, as paramilitary troops fired at a pickup truck that failed to heed warnings to stop at a cordon.
“The gunfire detonated explosives packed in the vehicle, killing the suicide bomber,” a military spokesman said, adding that flying debris and shrapnel wounded around 20 Frontier Corps troops guarding Kohat Tunnel.
A local security official in the semi-tribal district said two civlian passers-by were also killed in the blast.
Pro-Taliban militants accepted responsibility for the attack. Their spokesman, who goes by the name Mohammad, told journalists in Kohat by telephone from an undisclosed location that the attack was carried out to avenge Thursday’s arrest of their local commander.
Clashes broke out around Kohat Tunnel early this year during which pro-Taliban fighters also briefly captured the 1.9-km tunnel on the strategic Indus Highway, which connects the province with central and southern Pakistan.
Tensions rose in Darra Adam Khel, a town known for the illegal trade of arms and narcotics, in mid-2007 when militants bombed several video shops and girls’ schools in an attempt to enforce strict Taliban-style Islamic laws in the region.