Peshawar, Pakistan – Suspected militants fired four rockets into a city in northwestern Pakistan today, hitting houses and a mosque and killing 10 people, police said.
The rocket attack that hit Bannu, a troubled city in North West Frontier Province, at about 2 a.m. local time also injured 35, said Khwaja Mohammed, a city police official. He said five of the 10 dead were police officers and described the attack as “terrorist activity.” But he said it was too early to say more about who was behind it.
A confrontation between Islamic militants and the U.S.-backed government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has escalated this month after a bloody raid on a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad, and the redeployment of the army to North Waziristan, the tribal region closest to Bannu.
A key Taliban leader killed himself with a hand grenade on Tuesday to avoid capture – one of more than 300 people who have died in the violence across the country this month.
The Taliban veteran of Guantanamo Bay who became one of Pakistan’s most-wanted rebel leaders killed himself after he was cornered by security forces, officials said.
The death of Abdullah Mehsud, a stout, round-faced man in his early 30s who lost a leg years ago fighting for the Taliban, was a boost for Pakistani authorities under pressure from the U.S. to crack down on Taliban and al-Qaeda militants fighting on both sides of the Afghan border.
Mehsud was wanted in “many terrorist cases,” Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said. “He was a supporter of the al-Qaeda terror network and an active Taliban commander in Pakistan.”
A Pakistani intelligence official said Mehsud was intercepted on his way back from Afghanistan’s Helmand province, where he had fought with the Taliban for the past year or more.
Police surrounded Mehsud and three other men before dawn in the home of an Islamist politician in Zhob, officials said. Cheema said security forces had trailed Mehsud for three days before moving in.
Mehsud was incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after he was captured by U.S.-allied Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan in December 2001. It remains unclear why he was released from Guantanamo in March 2004.
