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Pakistani gov’t boosts security after three bombs rock Lahore, killing 33
The blasts which hit a Shiite procession on Wednesday bore all the hallmarks of pro-Taliban insurgents, who have carried out sectarian violence designed to destabilize the government. “Security has been tightened in the city to prevent any such incident. We had called the (paramilitary) rangers after the blasts last night, and they are on high alert and can be called again any time if needed,” Sajjad Bhutta, Lahore’s top administration official, told Reuters. The government may face renewed militant violence as it tries to manage the country’s worst floods, and dull expected long-term economic pain caused by them, security analysts say.
The floods struck just as the army said it had made progress in the war against the al-Qaeda-linked Sunni Taliban.
Reflecting the growing reach of the Pakistani Taliban, US prosecutors overnight charged its leader Hakimullah Mehsud in the plot that killed seven CIA employees at an American base in Afghanistan last December. The United States also added the Pakistani Taliban to its list of foreign terrorist organizations and set rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of two of its leaders, Mehsud and Wali-ur-Rehman.
Washington wants to see a stable Pakistan that can help fight militancy in Afghanistan and inside its own borders. Pakistani and US officials are concerned that militant groups could sieze of the disorder and misery caused by the floods to gain recruits.
One month after waters started raging from the northwest to the south, millions are still homeless and potentially fatal diseases threaten to bring a new wave of death and suffering. Day after day, Afshan Bibi, a mother of 11, trudges to a UN distribution center in Charsadda in the devastated Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province to get relief supplies to help her cope. Housed in a tent encampment, she comes away with nothing.
Pakistan flood victims await help one month on
Day after day, Afshan Bibi, a mother of 11, trudges to the UN distribution centre to get relief supplies to help her cope with the aftermath of Pakistan’s devastating floods.
A month later, housed in a tent encampment, she still comes away with nothing. “I’ve come here every day for a whole month, but I haven’t received anything,” she said. Only those producing a small paper token are entitled to any of the daily handouts at the sugar refinery housing the centre run by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Bibi and others are told to come back tomorrow. She is one of about 600 people -- mostly men -- from a nearby tent settlement who gather from 6 a.m. at the centre in the hope of getting blankets, mats, buckets, mosquito netting, soap or other supplies. By noon, they are hot, frustrated and often angry. Kifayat Ullah, a UNHCR official, pleads with them to calm down and queue up. “For God’s sake, make a line,” he yells into the crowd. “Then you will be able to get something. Otherwise we will not be able to distribute anything.” Anger is fuelled by unrelenting misery one month after their lives were washed away by floodwaters. “They’re very desperate,” Ullah said. Pakistan’s northwest, the first region to be hit by the floods and the most devastated, now has roads lined with tents and tens of thousands of displaced waiting to go home.
Punjab and Sindh downstream may have suffered the most economic damage, but the northwest saw the most deaths and the most damage as the floods raged at their full fury, dropping out of the steep mountains overlooking this part of the country. Charssadda Reuters
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