13 Pakistanis killed as attack surge continues

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Three suicide bombers, including a woman, attacked a police station in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing 13 people while army air strikes killed a dozen suspected militants in a Taliban stronghold ahead of an expected ground offensive.

The bombing in Peshawar was the latest in a surge of terrorist attacks over 11 days that has killed more than 150 people and underscored the power of the Taliban, which has warned the army against launching any operation in the militants' base close to the Afghan border.

In Islamabad, the army chief met with the prime minister and other leaders for talks that included plans for an offensive in South Waziristan. Afterward, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira vowed that the country's leaders would "take all steps to eradicate terrorism and extremism from the country," but he refused to discuss military plans.

Yesterday's twin bombings targeted a heavily fortified police station in Peshawar, the main city in the northwest. One attacker drove a car filled with explosives to the main gate of the station as a motorcycle carrying a man and a woman pulled up behind it, city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan said.

The woman jumped off and ran toward a housing complex where army officers live, while the man smashed the motorcycle into the car, which exploded into a huge fireball, Khan said. Police shot at the woman, who detonated explosives she was wearing. The blast destroyed part of the police station and a mosque next to it.

The 13 killed included three police officers, two women, and two children, said Gul Khan, a police official. Fifteen people were wounded.

Insurgents have sent attackers wearing military uniforms to bypass security to carry out some recent raids. But the use of a female suicide bomber is rare here and could signal a new tactic by the extremists.

In December 2007, what was believed to be the country's first female bomber blew herself up near a Christian school while apparently aiming for a military post in Peshawar. There were no other casualties.

The attack came a day after militants launched coordinated attacks on three law enforcement compounds in the country's second-largest city of Lahore, killing 19 people as well as the nine attackers. Also Thursday, an attack in Kohut killed 11 people near a government building, and a car bomb in Peshawar killed a small child at a housing complex for government employees.

Initial investigations into the Lahore attacks show Taliban fighters from the Afghan border region and militants from Punjab province were responsible, authorities have said. That has fueled concerns that the Taliban is forging links with other militant groups in the country, an alliance that would vastly increase the threat to the U.S.-allied government.

Observers say Punjab's militant problem is most pervasive in its south. But Lahore provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah played down any such threat, saying the Taliban doesn't have "any authority in southern Punjab, and there is no need for any operation" against the group.

In claiming responsibility for another recent attack, the Taliban said one of its cells in Punjab had carried it out.

The United States hopes a Pakistani army operation in South Waziristan, the Taliban's main stronghold, will help break much of the militant network that threatens Pakistan and U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan. Kaira, the information minister, did say when an offensive would begin.