Claiming the Qur’an’s guarantee of Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111).
“Suicide attack in northwest Pakistan kills 13 people,” from the Daily Star, March 14 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A suicide attacker set off a bomb at a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 13 people and injuring 52, officials and a doctor said, underscoring the relentless security threat to this Islamic nation.
It was the second attack in Pakistan in less than 24 hours. Suicide bombers killed 55 people in near-simultaneous blasts Friday in the eastern city of Lahore.
In the Saturday violence, an attacker driving a three-wheeled motorised rickshaw detonated explosives at a roadblock manned by soldiers and police in the town of Saidu Sharif in the Swat Valley, police official Qazi Farooq said.
Swat was the scene of months of violence last year between Islamist militants and Pakistan’s security forces.
Lal Noor, a doctor at a local hospital, said 13 people died in the attack one soldier, one policeman and eight civilians and another 52 were wounded.
The Pakistani military launched a major offensive in Swat early last year after the collapse of peace talks with local Taliban officials who at the time controlled much of the valley.
The military took back the Swat Valley by mid-2009, but sporadic violence has continued.
No one claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack, but suspicion quickly fell on the Islamist militants, who have stepped up attacks against security forces in recent days….
Good investigative work, fellas!