Pakistan Security Brief - October 9, 2009

Pakistan Security Brief - October 9, 2009

� A suicide car bomb was set off in a crowded bazaar in Peshawar Friday morning killing more than forty and wounding more than a hundred; militants attacked and torched a NATO fuel tanker near Peshawar early Friday; several militants have been killed in offensive and retaliatory military operations in Waziristan over the past day; the British military is building a training camp in Balochistan province to help train the Pakistani Frontier Corps paramilitary unit over a three-year period. � �

• Forty-five people were killed in a large suicide car bomb that occurred near the Khyber Bazaar in Peshawar on Friday morning.� Fatalities are expected to rise given that over one hundred people were wounded by the explosion and some are in critical condition.� This is the sixth blast in Peshawar in the previous four months and the largest one since the death of Beitullah Mehsud in early August.� This blast comes at a time when the Pakistani army is preparing an offensive into South Waziristan Agency and just days after the bombing of the UN World Food Program office in Islamabad.[1]
  �
• A fuel tanker headed for Afghanistan to supply the US-NATO war effort was attacked and torched near Peshawar in a pre-dawn assault by suspected militants. �Most "non-military" supplies are moved into Afghanistan from the port of Karachi by truck.� This attack highlights the vulnerabilities that the supply line faces.[2]
  �
• A total of nine militants were killed in operations in North and South Waziristan on Thursday.� Four were killed in North Waziristan Agency after an army vehicle convoy came under attack and five others were killed in ground and helicopter gunship operations in South Waziristan Agency.[3]
  �
• In an attempt to assist Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps' fight against the Taliban in FATA, the British military is building a training camp in Balochistan.� The British military will send twenty-four army trainers who will join six US soldiers in training the Frontier Corps for a three-year period.� The British and US forces will not join the Frontier Corps on offensive operations.[4] �� �