Taliban bomb targets US cars in Pakistan17:36 AEST Fri May 20 20113
The Taliban bombed a US consulate convoy in
Peshawar, killing one person and wounding 11 others in the first attack on Americans
in Pakistan since Osama bin Laden's death.
A US embassy spokesman said no US personnel were seriously wounded in the rush-hour attack in the volatile northwestern city, which runs into the tribal belt that Washington has
branded a
global headquarters of Al-Qaeda.
Police said two foreigners were lightly wounded. One of two armoured vehicles was damaged by what a bomb disposal official said was 50 kilos of low-grade explosives packed into a car and detonated by remote-control.
"Two vehicles of the US consulate were on their way to the consulate when they were attacked," US embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez told AFP.
"One vehicle was damaged. There is no death among our personnel and there are no serious injuries," he added.
"Only one car was hit. In that car there were US citizen diplomats and a Pakistani driver," he said.
Witnesses said the US consulate car skidded off the road after the blast, which happened at around 8:25 am (local time, and smashed into an electricity pylon on a pedestrian footpath.
Senior officer Liaquat Ali said a local man riding on a motorbike was killed and 11 others wounded, including two foreigners, although not seriously.
He said that the two foreigners received "minor injuries."
The bomb gouged a foot-deep crater out of the roadside, cracked the front wall of a nearby house and shattered the windows in two others, said an AFP reporter on the scene.
A private car was partially damaged and the motorbike of the one person who was killed was flung about four metres from the blast site.
Hukam Khan, in charge of the bomb disposal squad in Peshawar, said the 50 kilos of explosives were planted in a car before being detonated.
"They were not good quality explosives, that's why there was relatively little damage," he told AFP.
The
Pakistani Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility, in a telephone call to AFP, and threatened further attacks against Western targets.
"Our first enemy is Pakistan, then the United States and after that, other NATO countries," said spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan.
The United States leads a NATO force of around 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan that is trying to put down a 10-year Taliban insurgency. Pakistani logistical and military support is considered vital to the war effort.
"Our men have penetrated all Pakistani cities and we will launch more such attacks in the future," Ehsan said.
Friday's attack came exactly a week after the Taliban claimed a devastating bomb attack that killed 98 people outside a police training centre in the northwest as the first revenge for bin Laden's death.
One day earlier, US special envoy Marc Grossman held talks with Pakistan's leadership in Islamabad, stepping up efforts to smooth over a crisis sparked by the US Navy SEALs raid that killed the Al-Qaeda chief on May 2.
In the second high-profile American visit to Pakistan in days, the envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan held talks with President Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and other senior cabinet ministers.
US Senator John Kerry visited on Monday and later insisted that Pakistan was stepping up efforts to battle extremists and help stabilise Afghanistan.
US officials have long accused Pakistan of sheltering militants active in Afghanistan, although they say so far there is no evidence that the country's intelligence services were complicit in hiding bin Laden.
Pakistan's civilian and military leaders were left angry and embarrassed over the unilateral US raid that killed Al-Qaeda's chief, who had been living, possibly for years, in a military academy town two hours' drive from Islamabad.
It rocked the country's seemingly powerful security establishment, with its intelligence services and military widely accused of incompetence or complicity over the presence of bin Laden in a suburban house in the city of Abbottabad
China will never leave pakistan in a lurch
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