OpEdNews - Article: Christmas Day Remains Deadliest For Residents of Bajaur

There will be no denying the fact that rulers of the world have still been playing politics on war and this is the reason that there are still deaths and destruction in tribal areas situated on Pak-Afghan border and other parts of the world. Terrorists have chosen the Christmas Day for carrying put suicide attack. According to initial reports, more than 50 people have been killed in the attack. Some 1500 people were present during the attack. The death toll will be much much higher as there are still people, who are in critical condition.

Till filing this report there is no rescue operation in the areas. The people have been helping themselves. Due to non-availability of health facilities a large number of injured people were rushed to Peshawar, the capital of tribal areas. But here the situation is not good for them as they have been getting nothing.

Tribal elders have accused the government of Pakistan for all these attacks saying that some of Pakistani officials have been providing active support of terrorists. It is worth-mentioning that Pakistan Army has been carrying out an operation in Bajaur Agency for the last two years, but so far no known terrorists have either been arrested or killed. Tribal elders think that the government of Pakistan is fully involved in these acts of terrorism. They demanded that tribal areas must be given under the control of the United Nations.

A female suicide bomber detonated her explosives-laden vest in a crowded aid distribution center in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 41 people and wounding dozens waiting for food stamps, officials said.

The attack appeared to be the first suicide bombing staged by a woman in Pakistan, and it underscored the resilience of militant groups in the country's tribal belt despite ongoing military operations against them.

The bomb hit the main city in Bajur, a region near the Afghan border where the military has twice declared victory over Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents. It also came a day after some 150 militants killed 11 soldiers in a coordinated assault in a neighboring region where the army also has carried out operations.

The bomber, dressed in a traditional women's burqa, first lobbed two hand grenades into the crowd waiting at a checkpoint outside the food aid distribution center in the town of Khar, local police official Fazal-e-Rabbi Khan said. The attacker then detonated her explosives vest, he said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Khan said the victims were from various parts of the Bajur tribal region who gather daily at the center to collect food tokens distributed by the World Food Program and other agencies to conflicted-affected people in the region. The people were displaced by an army offensive against Taliban militants in the region in early 2009.

Islamist militants battling the state have attacked buildings handing out humanitarian aid in Pakistan before, presumably because they are symbols of the government and Western influence.

Local government official Tariq Khan said the blast also wounded 60 people, some of them critically, of about 300 who were at the scene.

Tariq Khan and another local official, Sohail Khan, said an examination of the human remains has confirmed the bomber was a woman.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based security and political analyst, said the suicide bombing appeared to be the first carried out by a woman in Pakistan.

"It is no surprise. They can use a woman, a child or whatever," Rizvi said. "Human life is not important to them, only the objective they are pursuing" of undermining state power, he added.

Male suicide bombers often don the burqa -- an Islamic head-to-toe dress that also covers the woman's face -- as a disguise. In 2007, officials initially claimed Pakistan's first female suicide bomber had killed 14 people in the northwest town of Bannu but the attacker was later identified as a man.

Akbar Jan, 45, who sustained leg wounds in the bombing, said from his hospital bed that people were lining up for the ration coupons when something exploded with a big bang.

"We thought someone had fired a rocket," he told The Associated Press. He said within seconds he saw the ground strewn with the wounded.

"I realized a little later that I myself have suffered wounds," he said. "Everybody was crying. It was blood and human flesh everywhere."

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the bombing and said Pakistanis are "united against them."

Bajur is on the northern tip of Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal belt, bordering Afghanistan and the so-called "settled" areas in Pakistan. It has served as a key transit point and hideout for al-Qaida and the Taliban.

1 | 2