UN closes Peshawar offices for two days
By IANSTuesday, April 6, 2010
PESHAWAR - The UN announced a two-day closure of its offices here Tuesday, a day after a deadly Taliban attack on the US consulate in this northwestern Pakistani city and a massive explosion at a political rally in Lower Dir claimed 59 lives.
“For security reasons, United Nations’ offices in Peshawar have closed temporarily for two days,” UN spokesperson Ishrat Rizvi told Geo News.
“We took this step as a precautionary measure and for the protection of our staff, we have advised them to work from home for two days. This step was taken because of security fears,” she added.
At least 12 people were killed in a series of bomb and suicide explosions Monday afternoon on the US consulate in the high-security zone of Peshawar, the capital of the restive North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
Among the dead were six attackers, two security personnel, a civilian and three foreigners, whose identities were, however, not immediately known. At least 18 people were injured.
The blasts came hours after a powerful explosion ripped through a political rally in the Lower Dir area of the NWFP. That attack occurred in Timer Girah sub-district of Lower Dir during a political rally taken out by the province’s ruling Awami National Party (ANP)
“The death toll now stands at 47 while 107 people are injured,” Online news agency quoted Wakeel Mohammad, the head of a state-run hospital in Timar Girah, as saying Tuesday.
Taliban spokesperson Azam Tariq claimed responsibility for Monday’s attacks, warning of more strikes if the Pakistani military continued its campaign against the militants in the tribal North and South Waziristan regions along the Afghan border.
Some 600 people, mostly civilians, have died in a series of blasts that rocked a vast region from the NWFP to Pakistan’s commercial capital Karachi in the last three months of 2009.
In the most horrendous of these bombings, 177 people, including a large number of women and children, were killed Oct 28, 2009, in a suicide attack at a crowded market in Peshawar.
The attacks are linked to the military operations against the Taliban in Waziristan that had begun in early October 2009.
The operations began in the NWFP in April; within six months, the military had managed to push the militants into their Waziristan strongholds.
