WANA, Pakistan: Suspected militants blew up a radio station’s transmission tower in Pakistan’s rugged tribal region bordering Afghanistan yesterday but there were no casualties, local officials said.
The state-run local station in South Waziristan’s main town of Wana has suspended its broadcasts indefinitely after the explosion, senior producer Humayun Khan said.
“The tower has been totally destroyed,” he said.
Security officials said militants placed explosives at the foot of the tower outside Radio Pakistan’s main building in the region, where troops are hunting Al Qaeda and Taleban rebels and their local sympathisers.
The pre-dawn blast was heard several kilometres away, residents said.
The station is near several government buildings and local administration offices as well as a base of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary.
“It is the work of pro-Taleban elements. They attacked the tower last year also,” a security official said, requesting anonymity.
Separately two Pakistani military officers were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their convoy in neighbouring North Waziristan tribal district, another security official said.
“One major and one captain were slightly injured when a remote-controlled bomb exploded near their vehicle near Mubarik Shahi village,” the official said.
The military immediately launched a search operation in the area for suspects behind both of the attacks but no arrests were made, he said.
Suspected pro-Taleban militants blew up a police van in the nearby town of Dera Ismail Khan on Sunday, killing three policemen, three paramilitary soldiers and one passer-by.
Officials said the blasts were likely linked to a recent clashes between insurgents in the lawless tribal areas and security forces.
Meanwhile, masked gunmen shot dead two Pakistani government workers at a picnic spot and seriously wounded another in the latest violence in the southwestern province of Balochistan, officials said yesterday.
The victims were from a group of seven employees of the Balochistan Development Authority who had gone to the hill resort of Pir Ghaib, 55km south of the provincial capital Quetta yesterday, they said.
“It is an extremely shameless act, they killed innocent people,” said Raziq Bugti, spokesman for the Balochistan government, adding that troops had been rushed to the area to hunt down the killers.
Mohammad Kashif, 36, a cashier who suffered bullet wounds to his back, said 15 masked men armed with Kalashnikov rifles descended on the picnic spot where around 150 people were enjoying a day out.
A dozen other men stood guard on a nearby ridge.
“They lined up everyone, demanded their national identity cards and finally selected three of us, who had settled in Balochistan from Punjab,” Pakistan’s most populous province and the country’s political heartland, Kashif said from his hospital bed.
The gunmen, believed to be members of rebel tribes in the area, “told us to hand over our mobile telephones, cash and wristwatches to our family members and took us about half a kilometre away,” Kashif said.
Then, Kashif said, an armed man told them “This is the last moment of your life, you can recite verses from the Holy Quran.”
Kashif added: “We wept and cried for mercy but they refused and forced us to run and then opened fire. Two of my colleagues died, a bullet hit my shoulder and I fell down. They presumed I was dead.”
