PESHAWAR, Pakistan // At least 12 policemen were killed in Pakistan yesterday, the latest in a surge of violence that has left citizens questioning if the government can stop militancy.
In the north-west, a bomb rigged to a bicycle hit a police patrol on its way to guard a polio vaccination team, killing six policemen and a boy.
The attack in the Charsadda district also wounded 11 people, four of them policemen, said officer Shafiullah Khan.
The bomb, set off by remote control, struck close to a busy town market. The boy who was killed along with the six policemen in the patrol was just a bystander.
In the south-west, six Pakistani police officers were killed while escorting a Spanish tourist as he cycled through the highly volatile province of Baluchistan.
The cyclist and his escort of local tribal police were ambushed in Mastung district.
Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is one of Pakistan’s most unstable provinces, rife with separatist and militants and plagued by sectarian bloodshed.
Kidnappings for ransom are common in parts of the province and Western hostages could be expected to fetch a high price.
“The local tribal police officials were escorting the Spanish cyclist after he entered Pakistan from Iran when gunmen attacked him,” a senior local administration official, Shafqat Sehwani, said.
The cyclist suffered only minor injuries.
The attacks came following a particularly deadly day in Pakistan. A car bomb struck a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims in a restive region of the south-west on Tuesday, killing 20 people, including women and children.
Also on Tuesday, three health workers were killed in an attack on a polio vaccination team in Karachi.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attacks but the Pakistani Taliban have killed thousands of civilians, policemen, soldiers and officials in recent years. The militants are campaigning to overthrow the government and install their harsh brand of Shariah.
The Taliban targeted the military in attacks on Sunday and Monday, killing 34 soldiers and seven civilians in northwestern city of Bannu and in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near the capital, where a suicide bomber blew himself up near the country’s main military headquarters.
Polio vaccination teams have also come under relentless attacks. Pakistan is one of only three countries where the polio virus is still endemic and militants have killed more than 30 polio workers and troops protecting them in recent years.
Militants oppose vaccinations against polio and consider such campaigns a cover for spying against Pakistan and a conspiracy to allegedly make Muslim boys sterile.
The vaccination campaign is also viewed with suspicion by many in Pakistan after a fake vaccination effort was used as a cover by the CIA in its pursuit of Osama bin Laden
Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, has long supported a policy of negotiating with militants instead of using military force to subdue them, but so far the Pakistani Taliban have shown little desire to negotiate with his government.
The government has come under heavy pressure to aggressively tackle a surge in militant violence instead of solely relying on efforts to start peace talks.
After the two attacks against the army, the Pakistani air force Tuesday pounded militant hide-outs in North Waziristan near the Afghan border, killing dozens of people.
The Pakistani military in recent years has carried out several offensives against the Taliban in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, but North Waziristan has largely been spared.
* Associated Press with additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
