9 killed in suicide attack on PAF bus

Sargodha/Islamabad—At least nine people, including eight Pakistan Air Force (PAF) officials, were killed Thursday in a suicide attack On a Pakistan Air Force bus at Sargodha Faisalabad road. A suicide bomber riding an explosive-laden motorcycle blew himself up near the bus carrying the air force personnel on duty from Matha Massom to Sargodha Air Base, said a PAF statement.
As per the latest information available, eight personnel have embraced Shahadat and forty are injured. The injured have been admitted to the Hospitals, the statement said. “The bus was targeted when it was carrying the employees of the Pakistan Air Force to a training school at the air base, and this was a routine movement which takes place every morning,” said Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman of interior ministry.
Four flying officers, three civilian employees and one squadron leader were among the eight dead air force personnel, while the charred body of the suspected suicide bomber was also found at the scene. More than 40 people, including six children in a school van passing nearby, were wounded in the bombing, said Waseem Ahmed, the district police officer.
The injured have been shifted to Sargodha hospitals and 22 are said to be in critical condition and have been shifted to PAF hospital Sargodha. Emergency has been declared at all the local hospitals nearby Five of the deceased have been identified as Sohaib, Zain ul Abadin, Kamran, Shoaib and Bilal.
Security has been intensified at the site and Faisalabad Road has been closed for traffic. President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz have condemned the attack vowing to clamp down heavily on terrorism.
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed into a Pakistan Air Force bus on Thursday, killing at least eight men and wounding about 40, the latest in a wave of attacks against the military, officials said. The bomber struck around 7 a.m. near an air base in Sargodha, about 125 miles south of the capital Islamabad, said air force spokesman Sarfraz Ahmed. Local police chief Hamid Mukhtar Gondal said the bus was destroyed and that investigators had collected body parts of the attacker. Sahid Malik, an official at the air force’s hospital in Sargodha, said the dead men were air force employees. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad called the attack “an act of terrorism.” The bombing came just two days after a suicide attacker blew himself up at a police checkpoint near the army office of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi, a garrison city just south of the capital, killing seven.
There have been no claims of responsibility for this week’s attacks, which have rattled a country wracked by a wave of Islamic militant violence. Musharraf, a key U.S. ally, is under pressure from Washington to crack down pro-Taliban and al-Qaida militants hiding in the country’s border regions near Afghanistan.
In the northwestern district of Swat, where recent clashes between security forces and supporters of a militant cleric have killed scores, fighting has resumed after a two-day lull. An army helicopter attacked militants in the Sambad area of the mountainous region Wednesday after it came under fire.—Agencies