Fourteen people were killed and 65 injured on Saturday in a suicide bomb attack in north-western Pakistan's Swat Valley, a day after two bombings killed dozens in the city of Lahore, police said.
Taliban militants claimed responsibility for all three attacks, saying these were to avenge Pakistan's support for the U.S. in its fight against terrorism and its recent offensives against the Islamist insurgents.
District police chief Qazi Ghulam Farooq said a suicide bomber was walking toward a crowded legal court when he was challenged by security guards in Mingora, the main city in the Swat district.
“The security forces opened fire on him, and the bomber detonated his explosives,” Mr. Farooq said.
The Swat bombing comes a day after two suicide bombers blew themselves up within seconds of each other near a convoy of military vehicles in the eastern city of Lahore, killing 48 people and injuring 95. Militants carried out a series of low-intensity bombings in two residential areas later that night.
A Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, told CNN by phone that failure to halt operations against the Taliban will lead to more attacks. “The government of Pakistan has become puppet of U.S.,” the CNN cited Tariq as saying. The Taliban have spread 2,000 suicide bombers across the country to target “security personnel and government installations,” he claimed. The Swat bombing was the sixth attack this week. On Monday, a suicide car bombing brought down a building housing the office of an anti-terrorism agency, killing 15 people in Lahore. Two days later, more than a dozen gunmen raided an office of the Christian aid group World Vision and killed six Pakistani employees in the northern district of Mansehra.
Narayan Lakshman reports from Washington DC
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday expressed sympathy for the victims of Friday's bombings in Lahore, and the families and friends of those killed and injured. There was no justification in killing innocent people, said Ms. Clinton.
Criticising the targeting of civilians she said: “The coordinated multiple attacks in Lahore demonstrate the suffering that violent extremist elements are willing to inflict on the people of Pakistan — people who only wish to go about their daily lives in peace.”
Ms. Clinton commended Pakistan for its fight against such extremism; particularly the commitment of Pakistan's security and law enforcement forces to protecting the Pakistani people.
