Thursday, February 4, 2010

According to Pakistani officials, thirty-five suspects have been arrested as part of their investigation into the bombing in north-west Pakistan that killed three American soldiers and four Pakistanis on Wednesday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bomb and threatened more attacks.

According to a senior official in the North-West Frontier Province, the police made thirty arrests. Five were made by the paramilitary Frontier Corps. Naeem Khan, a police official, said that a suicide car bombing is more plausible than a remote-detonating device. He said, “We are questioning them in an effort to trace those who orchestrated the suicide attack.”

“We have recovered the engine of the car we suspect was used in the bombing. We have also found some limbs which we suspect are of the bomber. We have sent these limbs for DNA tests,” he added.

District police officer Mumtaz Zareen stated that militants had exploded the bomb as the soldiers’ convoy passed the school in the Lower Dir district near Swat Valley, a well-known former stronghold of the Taliban.

A statement from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad said the American military personnel were part of an ongoing training program with paramilitary troops in the north-west.