Iran Tracker

Pakistan Security Brief – October 9, 2009

  A suicide car bomb was set off in a crowded bazaar in Peshawar Friday morning killing more than forty and wounding more than a hundred; militants attacked and torched a NATO fuel tanker near Peshawar early Friday; several militants have been killed in offensive and retaliatory military operations in Waziristan over the past day; the British military is building a training camp in Balochistan province to help train the Pakistani Frontier Corps paramilitary unit over a three-year period.    

• Forty-five people were killed in a large suicide car bomb that occurred near the Khyber Bazaar in Peshawar on Friday morning.  Fatalities are expected to rise given that over one hundred people were wounded by the explosion and some are in critical condition.  This is the sixth blast in Peshawar in the previous four months and the largest one since the death of Beitullah Mehsud in early August.  This blast comes at a time when the Pakistani army is preparing an offensive into South Waziristan Agency and just days after the bombing of the UN World Food Program office in Islamabad.[1]
   
• A fuel tanker headed for Afghanistan to supply the US-NATO war effort was attacked and torched near Peshawar in a pre-dawn assault by suspected militants.  Most “non-military” supplies are moved into Afghanistan from the port of Karachi by truck.  This attack highlights the vulnerabilities that the supply line faces.[2]
   
• A total of nine militants were killed in operations in North and South Waziristan on Thursday.  Four were killed in North Waziristan Agency after an army vehicle convoy came under attack and five others were killed in ground and helicopter gunship operations in South Waziristan Agency.[3]
   
• In an attempt to assist Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps’ fight against the Taliban in FATA, the British military is building a training camp in Balochistan.  The British military will send twenty-four army trainers who will join six US soldiers in training the Frontier Corps for a three-year period.  The British and US forces will not join the Frontier Corps on offensive operations.[4]