ISLAMABAD — An insurgent driving a truck laden with up to a ton of explosives targeted an office of Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency Tuesday, the latest assault in a terrorist rampage that has left 500 people dead since early October.
Tuesday’s attack, which killed 12 people, was aimed at the office of Inter-Services Intelligence in the city of Multan, in the south of Punjab province. Monday, a bomb tore through a market in Punjab’s provincial capital, Lahore, killing 49 people.
The significance of the attack in Multan is partly due to its location in southern Punjab, an area that previously had suffered little terrorist violence in the insurgent offensive. One reason is that the region has housed militant groups that the ISI had backed secretly in the past. Analysts think that some of those extremist groups now have linked instead to al-Qaeda.
The insurgent assaults have coincided with the military’s offensive against the base of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt on the border with Afghanistan.
While Washington is publicly pressing Pakistan to move against Afghan insurgents who are based on its soil, a crucial element in the Obama administration plan for Afghanistan, Islamabad says that it’s fully stretched trying to combat the al-Qaeda-inspired domestic insurgency.
McClatchy Newspapers
