11 seconds ago 2009-11-29T06:30:02-08:00
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Pakistan police checkpoint in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Monday killing three people, police said.
Initial reports said the bomber got out of a rickshaw and detonated his explosives at the checkpoint on the outer ring road of the northwestern metropolis, which runs into the Al-Qaeda and Taliban-infested tribal badlands.
"It was a suicide attack," city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan said.
"According to initial reports, one civilian and one policeman died," he told reporters at the bomb site.
Police official Mohammad Karim told AFP three people were killed.
Doctor Zafar Iqbal at the city's main government-run Lady Reading Hospital confirmed that medics received two dead bodies and six wounded.
Suicide attacks and bombings frequently strike Peshawar. On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed 14 people in a crowded cattle market.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was avenging Mayor Abdul Malik's efforts to raise a militia to fight Islamist rebels.
Malik, who once had close links to the hardline Taliban movement, switched sides in 2008 and raised a local force to battle the Islamist extremists on the fringes of the city.
Pakistan is waging a military offensive against homegrown Taliban umbrella movement Tehreek-e-Taliban in their mountain hideouts in South Waziristan.
Islamist militants have carried out a wave of suicide attacks and bombings across Pakistan, killing more than 2,450 people since July 2007.
