No respite, no refuge, no sanctuary from the jihad. “Car bomb at Pakistani refugee camp kills 13,” by Riaz Khan and Rebecca Santana for the Associated Press, March 21 (thanks to all who sent this in):
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) “” A car packed with explosives blew up inside a refugee camp in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday as hundreds of people lined up to get food, killing 13 and wounding 25, officials said.
The attack on the Jalozai camp underlines the intensity of the conflict in Pakistan’s northwest, where refugees are sometimes caught in the middle of a battle between the government and militants. Militants often don’t want residents to flee an area of conflict, in part because it deprives them of a civilian population in which to hide and undermines their claim that they have local support.
The people living in Jalozai camp, which lies on the outskirts of the main northwest city of Peshawar, are Pakistanis who have been displaced by fighting between the army and the Taliban in the country’s northwest.
Peshawar is located on the border of the tribal region, the Taliban’s main sanctuary in the country, and has been hit with scores of bombings in recent years. The Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government in an attempt to establish an Islamic state and end Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in fighting militancy.
Most of the people hit by the attack were from the Bajur and Khyber tribal areas along the Afghan border, said police officer Mohammad Zahid. The army has carried out operations against the Pakistani Taliban in both those areas.
An official with one of the aid groups was working in an office about 30 meters (yards) from where the vehicle exploded.
“It was very terrible, very terrible. We were very near. It was very loud,” said Mumtaz Bangash. “I have seen so many injured people.”
Among the dead were a security guard and an employee of a Pakistani aid group who were walking by when the bomb exploded, said Faiz Muhammed, who runs Khyber Paktunkhwa province’s programs to help displaced people. The rest of the 13 killed were camp residents….