Taliban bomber kills 2 Pak soldiers
Agencies
Muzaffarabad, June 25: In the first incident of its kind, a Taliban suicide bomber targeted a vehicle of Pakistan army in Pakistan administered Kashmir Friday, killing two soldiers and injuring three others.
“The attacker blew himself up near the army vehicle in the Shaukat Lines area of Muzaffarabad, the capital of PaK, early this morning,” Pakistani military spokesman said in a statement.
He said, “Two soldiers were killed instantly and three injured in the explosion.  The injured were rushed to the Combined Military Hospital in Muzaffarabad,” he said.
Police and security forces cordoned off the bomb site and started combing operations in the area for clues.  ‘We have beefed up the security and have started a search operation,” the top administrative official in Muzaffarabad, Choudry Imtiaz said.
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack.
Hakimullah Mehsud, a deputy of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, told international news agencies the attack was launched to prove that Mehsud had not been weakened by the recent strikes on his suspected hideouts in northwest Pakistan.
The cities across Pakistan have been hit by a wave of suicide attacks and bombings, most of them targeting security personnel, since the army launched an operation against the Taliban in the north western Swat valley and adjoining areas.
Mehsud has directed a string of bloody bombings across the country in recent weeks in retaliation against the government operations, and the suicide attack in Pakistani Kashmir could mark an extension of his campaign against the government's security forces to a strategically sensitive area.
"In the past two months, each side has been raising the stakes," said Ishtiaq Ahmad, an expert on terrorism and regional security at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. "Battles lines are increasingly being drawn now, and the physical extermination of the enemy has been clearly outlined."