MINGORA: A militant blew himself at a police station in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley on Sunday killing 12 cadets in the second such attack in the area in recent weeks, a senior government official said.
The military went on the offensive in the region northwest of the capital in late April and has killed or driven out many Taliban militants in what has been widely seen as a successful operation, but the attacks show the militants can hit back.
‘Training was going on when a suicide bomber disguised as a recruit walked into the building and blew himself up,’ Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of the North West Frontier Province where Swat is located, told Reuters.
‘We have reports that 12 were killed’ in the attack in the main town of Mingora, he said.
Pakistan's military push had allayed fears among its allies, in particular the United States and other countries with troops in neighbouring Afghanistan that the nuclear-armed country was failing to get to grips with spreading militant violence.
A suicide bomber killed 22 Pakistani border guards on Thursday in an attack at the main crossing point into Afghanistan at the west end of the Khyber Pass.
It was the first big attack in Pakistan since Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a US missile strike on August 5 and raised fears that the militants, who officials say have been in disarray, were hitting back.
Five soldiers were killed in a suicide attack at a security checkpoint in the Swat valley on August 15.
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