Female suicide bomber targets Pakistani police

A female suicide attacker and a handcart bomb targeted Pakistani police yesterday, killing seven people in the first deadly attacks to hit the northwest during Ramadan, officials said.

The city of Peshawar, where the bombs struck, is on the frontline of a Taliban insurgency and borders Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt that Washington calls the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda. It was only the third time police have confirmed a woman suicide attacker in the nuclear-armed country of 167 million where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked bombers have killed 4,500 people since 2007, destabilising the government.

Dozens were wounded in yesterday’s attacks, carried out several hours apart in the Lahori Gate area of Peshawar, a teeming city of 2.5 million, targeting first a police van and secondly a police checkpost. “This was a female suicide bomber aged around 17 or 18 who threw a hand grenade on the police checkpost, 20 metres away from the site of the first blast, and then blew herself up,” police official Shafqat Malik said.

“Her vest did not explode completely. She was killed and another woman was also killed and three policemen were injured,” Mr Malik said.