Violence mounts in Pakistan border area, killing dozens
US and allies crank up pressure on militants
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Bombs destroyed an Internet cafe, wrecked a bus carrying handicapped children, and spread panic through Pakistan's main northwestern city yesterday, killing at least 11 people in a day of carnage across the militancy-plagued region.
An apparent US missile strike annihilated a Taliban raiding party mustering to cross into Afghanistan, officials said, while Pakistani troops claimed another 47 deaths in their bid to retake the Swat Valley.
Violence is engulfing Pakistani territory along the Afghan border as American and allied forces crank up the pressure on Al Qaeda and Taliban militants entrenched in the forbidding and barely governed mountains and valleys.
Washington and other nations are pouring in billions of dollars in aid and military assistance to prop up the pro-Western government in Islamabad, which yesterday sought to allay concerns that its nuclear weapons could fall into extremist hands.
The first of two bombs to explode in Peshawar yesterday was hidden in a car and devastated a street busy with traffic, shoppers, and worshippers heading to mosques to pray.
Television images showed several vehicles burning fiercely and a stricken white-and-green bus that had been dropping handicapped children at their homes around the city.
All eight students still on board were injured, one seriously, along with the driver and an assistant, medics and police said. Four other children and seven adults were killed, and dozens more people injured, they said.
Ahmad Khan, a 9-year-old who had been on the bus, sat shaking on his mother's lap at the Lady Reading hospital as surgeons tried to save the life of a classmate.
He struggled to tell her what had happened to him, throwing up his arms to mimic the explosion, then burst into tears and buried his bandaged head in her arms.
"My child is mentally impaired, but we had hope for him and sent him to school. Now I am even more worried for his future," said his veiled mother, Gul Bibi. "How could any human being do this?"
Safwat Ghayur, a senior police official, said one of several buildings badly damaged by the blast was an Internet cafe - a favorite target for violent Islamist extremists in Pakistan who consider the Web a source of moral corruption.
Ghayur said the cafe had received several threats and was attacked recently by gunmen. But it was unclear if any of the bomb victims had been in the cafe or if it was the intended target.
No group claimed responsibility for the car bomb, or a smaller explosion in the evening in a bazaar filled with ladies' clothes stores that police said injured four people.
An Associated Press reporter saw bystanders carrying away a screaming man, his bloodstained clothes shredded by the blast. Women streamed out of the area clutching shopping bags and wailing children.
Militants have vowed to carry out a constant stream of attacks in Pakistan in retaliation for dozens of American missile attacks on their strongholds in Pakistan's tribal areas.
In the latest strike, Pakistani officials said several missiles hit a religious school and a nearby vehicle yesterday morning near Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan tribal region. 