Bombs kill 18 in Pakistan, Intel agency targeted

Blast strikes giant US military base in Kabul
Bombs kill 18 in Pakistan, Intel agency targeted


Peshawar, PAKISTAN (Agencies)

Suicide car bombs tore through security offices in Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 18 people and heavily damaging the Peshawar headquarters of the country's top intelligence agency.

The first attack destroyed an office of Pakistan's main intelligence agency in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 10 people and wounding over 30, witnesses and officials said.


" A car came from the wrong side of the road and as security force personnel fired at it to stop it, the driver exploded the vehicle "

A security official"A car came from the wrong side of the road and as security force personnel fired at it to stop it, the driver exploded the vehicle," a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"It was the biggest explosion I've ever heard," said city resident Asad Ali.

A military spokesman said the bomber's target was the office of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and witnesses said the building in a military neighborhood had completely collapsed.

A second suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a suburban police station in the garrison city of Bannu, southwest of Peshawar, killing eight policemen and wounding five others, police said.

Pakistani soldiers make way for an ambulance carrying victims
Militants have stepped up attacks on security forces including a commando-style raid and hostage-taking at the army's headquarters in Rawalpindi last month.

The deadly assaults on Pakistan's police and intelligence agents come with 30,000 troops pressing their most ambitious offensive to date against homegrown Taliban networks in their mountain strongholds on the Afghan border.

The three-storey Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) provincial headquarters in the northwestern city of Peshawar was heavily damaged, with huge clouds of smoke spewing into the sky and debris littering the ground, witnesses said.

The front and middle of the building collapsed, and five bodies lay on the road in the minutes after the attack, said an AFP reporter in Peshawar, which runs into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt infested with al-Qaeda and Taliban.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Afghanistan an explosion hits a base used by the NATO-led military in Capital Kabul in what police said was the work of a suicide bomber.

Sergeant First Class Kevin Bell, a spokesman for U.S. and NATO-led forces, said the blast struck at Camp Phoenix, a giant base near the airport in the Afghan capital, used mainly by U.S. troops and also some from other NATO allies.

Violence in Afghanistan this year has reached the worst levels of the eight-year-old war, and militants have staged a number of attacks in the capital in recent months.