Blast at government office in Pakistan kills 12

Talking to media, the District Police Officer (DPO) Mardan Faisal Shahzad said that a suicide bomber rammed his explosive laden motorcycle at the gate of the NADRA Regional Office in Mardan which caused multiple casualties.

The Pakistani Taliban once controlled swathes of remote territory in the northwest, but a series of military offensives that began in 2009 has pushed them back into a few pockets. Wazir said if the attacker had managed to enter the government office, he might have killed many more people.

The blast took place at a time when the office was crowded with people lining up to make applications for Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs).

Security guard Pervaiz sacrificed his life tackling a suicide bomber in an attempt to save the lives of others at National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) office Mardan. Since the school attack, Pakistan has executed 330 people, a lot of them convicted criminals, not militants.

Wazir says the dead and wounded are being taken to hospitals.

The toll is expected to rise as most of the injured are in serious condition, Shaukat Yousafzai, the health minister in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, said by phone. The injured have been shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar.

Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the hardline Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban) claimed responsibility for the attack in an email sent to AFP.

“This office was attacked because it is an important institution of the infidel state of Pakistan”, he said in an email, vowing further attacks. The high police officials said owing to security threats though the security of the government offices was beefed up yet there was no intelligence based information about the Tuesday’s blast.

Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani Prime Minister, has condemned the attack, and instructed authorities to provide the best possible treatment for the wounded.