WORLD> Asia-Pacific
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WORLD> Asia-Pacific
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Suicide car bombing in Pakistan kills 41
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-12 19:54 He said the raid on army headquarters was carried out by the "Punjabi faction" of the militant group and it had given orders to militant branches in Pakistan's other provinces — Sindh, Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province — to launch similar operations. While membership of Pakistan's militant groups has always been overlapping, the prospect of them joining forces will alarm the government of the nuclear-armed nation as well as its Western allies, which needs a stable Pakistan to defeat insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan. The standoff at army headquarters followed warnings from police as early as July that militants from western border areas were joining those in the central Punjab province in plans for a bold attack on army headquarters. The suspected ringleader in the raid, a Punjabi known as Aqeel, also was believed to have orchestrated an ambush on Sri Lanka's visiting cricket team in Lahore this year. Also Monday, the Lahore High Court told police to toss out two criminal cases against a hardline cleric India blames for the last year's deadly siege of Mumbai, an official said. Police had accused Hafiz Saeed of illegally holding a public gathering and raising funds for a group they say was banned. The cases appeared designed to keep Saeed under some sort of detention while Pakistan probes his alleged role in the November attack that killed 166 people. But government prosecutor Malik Abdul Aziz said the court found there was no proof the government ever technically banned the group, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Saeed says Jamaat is a charity, but the U.N. has described it as a front for the militant group suspected in the siege, Lashkar-e-Taiba.
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