Car bomb kills 6 in Pakistan’s Swat

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide car bomber targeting an army convoy killed six people in Pakistan’s Swat district on Monday, just months after the military claimed to have quelled a Taliban insurgency.

The bomber blew up a vehicle packed with explosives as security forces drove through Mingora, the main town of Swat where the military has sought to reassert control after putting down the Islamist uprising.

Shops and cars were damaged in what was the deadliest attack in the former tourist district once frequented by Westerners since a suicide bomber flung himself at a military convoy killing 45 people on October 12 in Shangla.

Local television footage showed a car enveloped in flames and black smoke billowing down a street, as casualties lay on the ground in blood-soaked clothing. Soldiers rushed to the scene and ambulances ferried away the wounded.

Frightened women and children could be seen scurrying from the scene.

"Six people have been killed and 19 injured. It was a car bomb blast," Qazi Ghulam Farooq, Mingora police chief, told AFP by telephone.

Mohammad Idrees Khan, senior Swat police official, confirmed the death toll.

"It was a suicide car bomb . . . . The target was an army convoy," Major Mushtaq Ahmad Khan from the Swat Media Centre told AFP.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the bombing.

"Such inhuman acts of terrorism would not be able to shatter the determination of the people of Pakistan and the people of Swat . . . to curb this menace and fight the insane extremists," a statement from his office said.

Swat has been held up as a success story in Pakistan’s fight against Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants by local and U.S. officials, who praised the offensive for apparently ending a two-year local Taliban insurgency.

The former tourist resort, once favoured for its pristine natural beauty and skiing, slipped out of Islamabad’s control in July 2007 after radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah mounted a violent campaign to enforce Islamic Shariah law.

The army launched an offensive last April and says more than 2,150 militants were killed in Swat and the neighbouring Buner and Lower Dir districts. In July, it said that most of the insurgent bastions had been wiped out.

U.S. national security adviser General James Jones visited Swat valley earlier this month and congratulated Pakistani security forces on the "success" of their operations and noted their "tremendous sacrifices".

But despite the relative calm, sporadic clashes and suicide attacks have continue to rock the valley in the last seven months.

On December 1, a suicide bomber killed a provincial lawmaker as he received guests at his home in Swat’s Kanju town, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of Mingora.

Pakistan’s military is now engaged in fighting in the northwest tribal belt along the Afghan border, where the core Taliban leadership and al-Qaida-linked militants are holed up in the rugged mountain terrain.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since July 2007 in a deadly campaign blamed on Islamist militants opposed to the government’s alliance with the United States.