PESHAWAR, Pakistan—A suicide car bomber struck a police facility in an army cantonment in Pakistan’s main northwest city early Wednesday, officials said, killing one person and wounding at least 14 people in the latest attack in the country since the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Though no group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack, it added to fears that it will be a bloody summer as Pakistani Taliban and other Al-Qaeda affiliated groups carry out threats to avenge the Al-Qaeda chief’s slaying.
Already this month, the Pakistani Taliban has claimed they carried out three revenge attacks, including an 18-hour siege of a naval base that killed 10 people.
The bomber’s target early Wednesday morning appeared to be a building belonging to the police’s criminal investigation department, but Pakistani army facilities also were nearby, said Liaquat Ali Khan, a senior police official in Peshawar.
Senior provincial government minister Bashir Bilour said at least 1 person died, some 14 were wounded, and around 10 people were missing, possibly in the rubble of the collapsed building. Military forces quickly sealed off much of the cantonment, making access to the site difficult.
“Our determination is much higher than before, and we will fight till the defeat of these terrorists,” Bilour said.
Bin Laden was killed on May 2 by a team of US Navy SEALs elsewhere in Pakistan’s northwest, in the army town of Abbottabad roughly a mile away from Pakistan’s premier military academy.
Since the raid, US-Pakistan relations have sunk to new lows. Pakistani leaders insist they had no idea the Al-Qaeda leader had been living, apparently for five years, in the large, three-story house in Abbottabad. And they are furious that the US raided the house without telling them in advance.
The Pakistani Taliban, meanwhile, have promised to attack Western targets as well as Pakistani targets to avenge bin Laden’s death. The militant group has long despised the Pakistani government and army for their alliance with the US, a sentiment that many ordinary Pakistanis share as well.