At least 20 people, eight of them army troops, were killed when Taliban militants attacked a security post at Wakeen in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal region on June 9. The attack came five days after Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, commander of Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HUJI), was killed in an apparent US drone strike near Wana, South Waziristan. He was believed to be the mastermind of an audacious May 23 militant attack on Pakistan’s Mehran naval base in Karachi, which was repulsed after an indeterminate loss of life. (RTT, June 9; Dawn, June 4; Dawn, May 23)
The growing attacks are fueling speculation about the hidden hand of US and other foreign intelligence agencies., e.g. this typical passage from the Pakistan Tribune of June 9:
Regarding the terror-attack on the Mehran base, some sources indicate the involvement of Indian intelligence agency…which conducted this assault with the consent of American CIA and tactical support of Israeli spy agency, Mossad. In this respect, these agencies got the services of a group of al-Qaeda. Similarly, al-Qaeda-related Afghan Taliban who crossed over Pakistan, were also backed by these secret agencies.
See our last posts on Pakistan and the drone wars.
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More terror in Pakistan
At least 34 people were killed and 94 injured after twin explosions rocked a market in the Sadar area of Peshawar June 12. The first blast, relatively small, went off in the restroom of a restaurant in the crowded Khyber Super Market. As people gathered at the scene, a suicide bomber on a motorbike arrived at the restaurant minutes later and set off the second blast. (CNN, June 11)