Friday, May 20, 2011

Two dead in an attack on a U.S. consulate convoy in Pakistan

At least two people were killed and 10 wounded, including two Americans, by the explosion on Friday in a car bomb near a U.S. consulate vehicle in the city of Peshawar in western Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban admitted on Friday to be responsible for this attack, the latest incident in an outbreak of violence since U.S.

forces killed the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden this month. The attack occurred on a main road in an area where many Western diplomats live and used 50 kilos of explosives, police said. "There was an attack on a convoy of two cars from the consulate in Peshawar. A car was hit. We are still investigating what happened," said U.S.

Embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez. The source said one of the dead are Pakistani but he had no information on the nationality of the other. According to the TV channel 'Express', the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar said two of the wounded are Americans but did not report that citizens of that nationality were among those killed.

Peshawar is the capital of the restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province where the Taliban have a strong presence. The province has hosted this year some of the most devastating attacks on civilians and Pakistani security forces. Peshawar has seen several attacks by Taliban militants seeking to overthrow the Pakistani government backed and sheltered bin Laden in late 1980, when the Islamists were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda and its allies, the Pakistani Taliban, vowed to avenge the death of bin Laden at the hands of U.S. special forces on 2 May, the group said it will target the Pakistani government and its Western allies.

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