Bombing Kills 24 in Pakistan

By SAFDAR DAWAR And SAEED SHAH

A bombing outside a government office in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday killed at least 24 people, officials said.A faction of the Pakistani Taliban, a group called Jamaat ul Ahrar, claimed responsibility for the early afternoon blast at the office, where national identity cards are produced, in the town of Mardan.

Saeed Wazir, a senior police officer, said that a suicide bomber tried to enter the compound of the local office of the National Database and Registration Authority, but he was stopped at the gate by a security guard and he detonated explosives there.

“Our investigation will find out who the bomber was,” said Mr. Wazir.

Offices of Nadra, which are in all districts of the country, tend to be busy with queues of people applying for identity cards.Abandoned shoes, pools of blood and shattered glass marked the scene of the blast, television footage showed.The 68 injured were treated at hospitals in Mardan and the provincial capital Peshawar, medical staff said.

The Pakistani Taliban faction said that Nadra, which maintains an extensive database covering most Pakistanis, was targeted because it helps security forces identifying their members.

“We are targeting all of Pakistan’s institutions because as part of the state, they are being used against us,” the group said.Pakistan launched a military operation in June 2014 against the stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas, an offensive that was given further impetus after the group massacred over 130 schoolchildren in Peshawar in December last year.

Authorities early Tuesday morning executed four militants over separate incidents. They were condemned to death by special military courts set up in the wake of the Peshawar attack to try terrorist suspects.

The offensive against the Pakistani Taliban has led to a reduction in the number of attacks in the country, with much of the group now based in neighboring Afghanistan.

As of Dec. 20, 905 civilians were killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2015, compared with 1,781 last year, according to a tally maintained by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a website that tracks the number.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/bombing-kills-24-in-pakistan-1451397237