The brief lull in bomb blasts across the country was broken on Monday when a suicide bomber detonated himself in a mosque in the South Waziristan tribal agency along the Afghanistan border killing 26 people and wounding almost as many.
This was the deadliest of the three blasts that rocked the region already devastated by the floods; the other two being in the Kurram tribal agency and near Peshawar. The three blasts together took over 35 lives including a former member of the National Assembly Maulvi Noor Mohammad and a member of the anti-Taliban militia.
Mr. Mohammad was among those killed on the mosque in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan where the Army has conducted operations against militants. The suicide bomber apparently approached Mr. Mohammad — known to be pro-Taliban — while he was greeting people and detonated himself.
In Kurram, a bomb went off in a school premises when tribal elders were in a meeting killing about half-a-dozen people. Since both these areas are among the seven agencies that make up the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies, government presence here is negligible and human rights organisations have time and again stressed the need to bring them under the ambit of federal law.
The blast on the outskirts of Peshawar killed a leader of the anti-Taliban militia and a couple of his associates as he was passing by. The militia is being propped up by the government against the Taliban from within the community to serves as the eyes and ears of the establishment.
