Double Suicide Bombings Strike Southwest Pakistan

SLAMABAD, Pakistan — At least 21 people, including a senior army officer, were killed on Wednesday when two blasts were detonated by separate suicide bombers in southwest Pakistan, police officials said. Naseer Ahmed/Reuters At least 30 people were wounded and 21 were killed in Wednesday's two-pronged attack in Quetta, in southwest Pakistan. The attackers’ target was the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force commanded by army officers and stationed in the restive province of Baluchistan, including the provincial capital, Quetta. At least 30 people were injured in the explosions there. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Suspicion immediately fell on militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban. On Monday, Pakistani officials announced the arrest of a senior Qaeda leader, Younis al-Mauritani, who is from Quetta. The arrest operation was conducted by Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s intelligence organization, and the Frontier Corps, according to an army spokesman. The attack on Wednesday morning took place in a high-security neighborhood of Quetta where several government offices and homes of high-ranking government officials are located. The attackers struck the house of Brig. Farrukh Shehzad, the deputy inspector general of the Frontier Corps. One bomber detonated his vehicle outside the house at 8:58 a.m., a witness told AAJ TV, a private news channel. Minutes later, another attacker entered the house on foot and started firing before detonating his explosives. Brigadier Shehzad was wounded and his wife was killed, according to initial local news reports. A colonel, Khalid Masood, was also killed in the attack. Local television networks broadcast images of charred vehicles as ambulances ferried the wounded to nearby hospitals. The house of the wounded brigadier was badly damaged. Police officials said that at least 110 to 150 pounds of explosives were used in the car bombing and that the second attacker had least 22 pounds of explosives in his suicide vest. An identification card found at the scene was thought to belong to one of the attackers. It was issued to a 21-year-old Afghan man, Ahmad Gul, in Peshawar in early 2010. Many Afghan refugees live in Baluchistan and in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in the northwest. Quetta has a history of sectarian and nationalist violence. Qaeda leaders and Taliban militants are also thought to have found a haven in the city and the surrounding province. The United States Embassy in Islamabad issued a statement strongly condemning the attack, saying that “nothing can justify immoral and indiscriminate attacks against innocents, including Pakistan’s security forces.”