Female Suicide Bomber In Pakistan Targets Hospital Security, 4 Dead

Burqa bombing is back in style with the Taliban in Pakistan as a young Pakistani Muslim woman set off her suicide bomb vest just outside a hospital in Bajaur killing 4 (I'm not sure if the 4 includes her sorry ass).

The story comes from DAWN.

Female suicide bomber kills four outside Bajaur hospital


PESHAWAR: At least four people were killed Saturday when a female suicide bomber detonated her explosives outside a hospital in Khar, the main town in the restive Bajaur tribal region.

Local administration official Asad Sarwar confirmed the attacker was woman.

“The woman, in her early 20s, blew up her explosives as she walked to the main entrance of the hospital. Authorities have found the attackers head and legs and are conducting a detailed investigation,” said Sarwar, an assistant political agent in the tribal region.

Officials said the bomber apparently targeted security men guarding the hospital.

Hospital officials said four other people were also injured in the bombing.

Agency health officer, Mohd Riaz, said the dead included one security personnel and two civilians, while one of the dead was a hospital worker.

Bajaur is one of seven districts in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt, where Taliban militants are said to have carved out strongholds.

This is not the first time a woman has carried out a suicide attack in Bajaur.

In December 2010, burqa-clad woman blew up her explosives at a United Nations food distribution point in Khar, killing 45 people. The bombing, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, was the first suicide attack by a woman in the agency.

Pakistani Gunship Helicopters Take It To the Taliban in Bajaur Agency

Pakistan got into it today with the Taliban along the border with Afghanistan, sending in gunship helicopters that set about blowing the shit out of Taliban compounds in the Bajaur agency.  When the dust and blood settled, there were 28 dead Taliban and several of the compounds lay in rubble.  I think this is a prelude to the promised operation in North Waziristan...a dry run if you will.  Let's hope so.

The story comes from DAWN.

At least 28 militants killed in Bajaur Agency


PESHAWAR: At least 28 militants were killed and 15 arrested in Bajaur Agency’s Salarzai area in a clash between security forces and militants at Pak-Afghan border on Saturday, DawnNews reported.

The security forces attacked shelled the main lodgings of militants using gunship helicopters.

According to the security forces, several militants’ hideouts were destroyed during the attack.

Pakistani Authorities Discover House Full Of Would Be Female Suicide Bombers

Paramilitary soldiers survey the site of suicide bombing in Khar, the main town of Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region,Dec 25, 2010. — AP/File


You know, the title of this story from DAWN talks about Pakistani security officials arresting a "would be" female suicide bomber but then as you read along, it describes a second woman found wearing a vest and then FIVE others in the house and most of those were arrested - sounds like a whole cell got nabbed to me.

The significance of this is that this was in Bajaur which saw a woman suicide bomber blow herself up about 2 months ago and that attack killed 43 people.

From the story:

Authorities on Wednesday arrested a woman allegedly planning to blow herself up in the Bajaur tribal region where 43 people were killed two months ago in a female suicide attack, officials said.

“Security forces and local administration officials raided a house near Khar on Wednesday morning and arrested a woman wearing a suicide vest,” senior local official Sohail Khan told AFP.

He said the raid was ordered on a tip off that women were being trained as suicide bombers in the residential area of Siddiquabad near Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district.

He said five other people were also arrested, including two other women from the same house.

Now, as you can see from the story, that suicide bombing 2 months ago by a woman was the first reported by a female in Pakistan but what the Pakistanis have to come to term with is that al Qaeda has influenced jihadis all over the northwest provinces and agencies and I'd say it is safe to assume that there are female cells like this in several locations.

If we remember from Iraq, al Qaeda seized upon women who were widows of fallen jihadis - they preyed on their anger and grief and were able to convince them this was a way for them to glorify and join their husbands.

Authorities arrests woman ‘would-be suicide bomber’ in Bajaur


KHAR: Authorities on Wednesday arrested a woman allegedly planning to blow herself up in the Bajaur tribal region where 43 people were killed two months ago in a female suicide attack, officials said.

“Security forces and local administration officials raided a house near Khar on Wednesday morning and arrested a woman wearing a suicide vest,” senior local official Sohail Khan told AFP.

He said the raid was ordered on a tip off that women were being trained as suicide bombers in the residential area of Siddiquabad near Khar, the main town of Bajaur tribal district.

He said five other people were also arrested, including two other women from the same house.

“All six people are being interrogated,” he added, giving no details.

Two local intelligence officials confirmed the raid and arrests.

In Pakistan’s first known female suicide attack, a woman wearing a bomb under her burqa struck near a UN food distribution point on December 25.

Security forces have carried out a series of military operations against the Taliban and other militants in Bajaur since August 2008.

The military has claimed repeatedly to have eliminated the militant threat.

Bajaur is one of seven districts in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, which the United States considers the global headquarters of al Qaeda.

Female Taliban Suicide Bomber Kills 42 Pakistani Civilians Lined Up To Get Food

Remember all of those claims by the Taliban that U.S. and NATO forces are killing the civilians of Pakistan and Afghanistan with their incessant bombings? Well, the truth continues to come out that in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the VAST majority of civilian deaths can be attributed to the Taliban as yesterday, on Christmas Day, 42 Pakistani civilians in Bajaur agency were killed by a female Taliban jihadi who set off her suicide belt in a line waiting for food rations.

The jury is still out whether or not this jihadi suicide bomber gets 72 Chippendale dancers when she gets to paradise.

From the story at The Long War Journal:

A female Taliban suicide bomber killed 42 Pakistani civilians in an attack today at a World Food Program ration distribution point in Pakistan's tribal agency of Bajaur.

The female suicide bomber detonated her vest in the midst of a crowd of more than 300 people waiting at an outside checkpoint for handouts from the World Food Program in Khar, the main town in Bajaur. Those waiting for food were among the internally displaced people who had fled the fighting between the military and the Taliban over the past three years.

Pakistani officials said that 42 people were killed and 72 more were wounded, some critically.

Today's attack takes place just one day after the Taliban launched a series of assaults on Pakistani Frontier Corps checkpoints in Mohmand, which borders Bajaur to the south. In those clashes, 11 Frontier Corps troops and 24 Taliban fighters were reported killed.

This summer, the Bajaur Taliban vowed to continue to attack security forces and pro-government tribes. On July 8, the Taliban issued pamphlets in Bajaur announcing their return and threatening to kill tribesmen who support the government.

Now, the Taliban are going to justify this bombing as retribution against a tribe that has been friendly towards the government - if they had some balls, they would just come out and say that any Pakistanis who defy the iron fist rule of the Taliban will be killed.

And so today, the real macho men of the Taliban can sit back and relish in this "victory for allah" as they sent a WOMAN in to blow herself up and take with her innocent men, women and children.

And allah is so proud of them, I'm sure.

Female suicide bomber kills 42 people in Pakistan's northwest


A female Taliban suicide bomber killed 42 Pakistani civilians in an attack today at a World Food Program ration distribution point in Pakistan's tribal agency of Bajaur.

The female suicide bomber detonated her vest in the midst of a crowd of more than 300 people waiting at an outside checkpoint for handouts from the World Food Program in Khar, the main town in Bajaur. Those waiting for food were among the internally displaced people who had fled the fighting between the military and the Taliban over the past three years.

Pakistani officials said that 42 people were killed and 72 more were wounded, some critically.

Today's attack takes place just one day after the Taliban launched a series of assaults on Pakistani Frontier Corps checkpoints in Mohmand, which borders Bajaur to the south. In those clashes, 11 Frontier Corps troops and 24 Taliban fighters were reported killed.

This summer, the Bajaur Taliban vowed to continue to attack security forces and pro-government tribes. On July 8, the Taliban issued pamphlets in Bajaur announcing their return and threatening to kill tribesmen who support the government.

In the pamphlets, the Taliban "threatened the people, particularly the government employees and security forces, not to support the agenda of the US and its allies," The News reported. "The militants said that they would continue their 'jihad' against the US and its supporters. They also urged the Taliban fighters not to surrender to the government and warned them and security forces of stern action."

Over the past two years, the Pakistani military has twice declared victory in Bajaur.

The first time was on March 1, 2009, when Major General Tariq Khan declared victory in Bajaur. "They have lost," Khan told reporters after a brutal campaign that began in August 2008 was declared to have ended. "Their resistance has broken down. We think we have secured this agency. The Taliban have lost their cohesion." And in the neighboring tribal agency of Mohmand, Colonel Saif Ullah claimed the Taliban had been defeated and that the region was "under the control of law enforcement agencies."

But the Taliban continued to exert control in Bajaur and Mohmand during 2009, killing tribal leaders who dared to work with the Pakistani government and military.

Earlier this year, General Khan again claimed victory in Bajaur. On March 2, 2010, one year and one day after claiming the Taliban had lost in Bajaur, Khan again declared victory. He said that more than 2,200 Taliban fighters had been killed during two years of military operations.

Yet although the military claimed to have defeated the Taliban in Bajaur in both 2009 and 2010, the Taliban's senior leadership in this tribal agency remains at large.

Top leaders in the tribal agency, including Faqir Mohammed, a senior leader in Hakeemullah Mehsud's Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan and a close ally to al Qaeda's Ayman Zawahiri, have evaded Pakistani security forces during the offensive. Military officials claimed Faqir was killed in August 2008, but he later surfaced. Faqir established a parallel government in Bajaur, complete with sharia courts, recruiting centers and training camps, taxation, and security forces.

The US has conducted several airstrikes Bajaur, including two attacks that targeted Zawahiri and another that killed Abu Sulayman Jazairi, a senior Algerian operative for al Qaeda who was the terror group's operational commander tasked with planning attacks against the West.