ISI Office Hit By Bombers, Killing 20 People

ISLAMABAD:

Suicide bombers on Friday struck Pakistan's powerful ISI hitting its operational headquarters in northwestern city of Peshawar and a police station nearby in Bannu, killing 20 people, including seven personnel of the spy agency.

The strike on the spy agency overseeing Pakistan's anti-terror campaign and on the police station left 85 people wounded and came as 30,000 troops were pressing Taliban and foreign militants in their stronghold in lawless Waziristan.

A suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden truck into the gate of the ISI office within the cantonment of Peshawar city at 6.40 am, killing at least 12 people and injuring 60 others, police said.

The bomber's car was packed with about 200 kg of explosives, IGP Malik Naveed Khan told reporters.

Though the well-armed guards opened fire on the car to stop it, the attacker rammed his vehicle into the three-storey building reducing it to rubble, police said.

The blast brought down the front and middle portion of the building and its sound was so loud it could be heard up to 20 km away. Bodies lay strewen on the road and police fired in the air to keep the onlookers away till the bodies were taken to hospital.

Just an hour later, a second suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden mini truck near the main police station at Bakakhel in Bannu district of NWFP, killing eight persons and injuring 25 others.

Car Bomber Strikes Outside the US base

KABUL:

A suicide car bomber struck a convoy of civilian vehicles outside a US military base in Kabul early on Friday, wounding three Afghans and causing several casualties among foreigners, police said. The head of criminal investigations for Kabul police, Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, said 3-4 foreign casualties had been taken from the scene by Western troops, but he could give no details of the extent of their wounds.

A damaged white civilian vehicle could be seen at the debris-strewn blast site on a main road about 100 metres (yards) from Camp Phoenix, a large US military base also used by troops from other NATO countries near the airport. Witnesses said a second civilian vehicle that was destroyed in the blast had been removed, while US troops in armoured vehicles blocked off the site.

"We were having breakfast when we heard a huge bang. All the glass was shattered," said Abdul Jamil, a worker at a petrol station across the street from the site. He said he believed several foreigners had been killed inside the vehicle that had ben destroyed. Sgt. Kevin Bell, a spokesman for the US and NATO-led forces, confirmed a blast but gave no further details. Violence in Afghanistan this year has reached the worst levels of the eight-year-old war, and militants have staged a number of attacks in the capital in recent months.