Suicide attack kills 13, injures 24 in Quetta

Quetta, Feb 17 (UNI) At least thirteen people including a senior civil judge were killed and another 24 injured in one of the bloodiest suicide attacks in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta today.

However, Reuters said 15 people were killed and 25 injured in the attack.

''A suicide bomber blew himself up in the district court premises killing 13 people including judge Abdul Waheed Durrani and injuring another 24, mostly lawyers,'' Balochistan police chief Tariq Khosa told reporters in Quetta.

Mr Khosa said security agencies found body of the bomber from site of the attack, which was targeted against government installation, adding that involvement of a foreign hand cannot be ruled out.

Pakistan's private GEO TV quoted local officials as saying that the bearded bomber was 20 years old.

''The Quetta incident should be seen as a continuity of recent suicide attacks in the country,'' chief of the crisis management cell Brigadier (Retd) Javed Iqbal Cheema said in Islamabad.

The new wave of suicide attacks gripped Pakistan since January 26 almost a month after 25 suspected militants were killed in an air strike in Zamzola village of South Waziristan tribal region, bordering Afghanistan.

At least 20 people, mostly officials of the law enforcement agencies, were killed in the five suicide attacks, two of them in Islamabad and one each in Peshawar , D.I.Khan and Tank in NWFP in less than fifteen days from January 26 to February 6.

Cheema, who is interior ministry's point man to national security affairs, said the wave of suicide attacks in the country might be linked with government's anti-terror operations in the trobal regions.

''We are looking into this aspect also,'' he said.

''Pakistan's policy is very clear - it will not allow its soil to be used for acts of terror against any other country,'' he said in reference to recent anti-terror operations by government's forces in the tribal regions, which were aimed to hunt down foreign militants, who are allegedly involved in carrying out acts of terror inside Afghanistan.

Today's suicide attack came a day after Pakistani security agencies arrested three suspected suicide bombers from the port city of Karachi yesterday and recovered from them hand grenades, an explosives-laden jacket, Kalashnikovs and pistols.

UNI