LAHORE, Pakistan, (Reuters) – A prominent anti-Taliban Muslim cleric who condemned suicide bombings was killed yesterday in a suicide attack in the Pakistani city of Lahore, police said.
In another blast at around the same time, a suicide car-bomber set off explosives in an attack on a mosque in the northwestern town of Nowshera, killing at least four people, police said.
The blasts came as Pakistani forces stepped up attacks on militants across the northwest after the U.S. House of Representatives approved tripling aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.
Security forces have made progress in more than a month of fighting against Taliban militants in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad, and in recent days have begun operations in several other parts of the region.
The militants have responded with a series of bomb attacks.
Moderate cleric Sarfraz Naeemi was attacked at his office at his mosque complex after leading Friday prayers. Three people including Naeemi were killed and 11 wounded, top city administrator Sajjad Bhutta told reporters.
The young attacker posed as a religious student and avoided police checks at the main gate of Naeemi’s complex.
“He came through a small door that opens onto a side alley and entered the office in the guise of a disciple,” Bhutta said.
In the garrison town of Nowshera, in North West Frontier Province, four people were killed and more than 20 were wounded when a car-bomber attacked a mosque next to an army depot.
Rising Islamist violence has raised fears for Pakistan’s stability and for the safety of its nuclear arsenal but the offensive in Swat has reassured the United States about its commitment to the global campaign against militancy.
Pakistan is a vital ally of the United States as it struggles to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan and defeat al Qaeda.
U.S. officials said on Thursday insurgent violence in Afghanistan had accelerated sharply alongside the arrival of new U.S. troops, reaching its highest level since 2001.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta said he believed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan and he hoped joint operations with Pakistani forces would find him.