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Suicide Bomber Kills 34 In Pakistan

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The Associated Press

Published: December 29, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suicide bomber pretending to need help with his car killed 34 people in northwest Pakistan while the target of another recent attack, the Marriott in Islamabad, partially reopened three months after a brazen truck bombing at the luxury hotel left 54 dead.

The Marriott building was badly damaged by the September blast but renovations, a security overhaul and the addition of a giant bombproof wall made the hotel was ready to welcome guests, the owner said Sunday.

"We have expressed our resolve that we will not bow before the enemies of Pakistan," owner Saddaruddin Hashwani said.

The suicide attack Sunday, at a polling station where residents were casting votes for an open general assembly seat, comes amid concern that extremist violence is set to spike now that Pakistan is shifting troops toward India.

The military has not confirmed the troop movements, but it has restricted military leave and reports have said thousands were being redeployed away from the northwest - where many al-Qaida and Taliban militants are based - toward the eastern border with India amid tensions over last month's attacks in Mumbai.

India blames Pakistani militants for the slaughter of 164 people in its commercial capital, and it has not ruled out responding with force. But leaders of both nuclear-armed countries insist they want to avoid what would be their fourth war.

The polling station was in a school in Buner, a district bordering the Swat Valley, where the Pakistani army has waged an intermittent offensive against militants for more than a year. The explosion wounded 14 people, five of them critically, police official Beharmand Khan said.

"The suicide attacker pulled his car outside the polling station and asked people to push the vehicle, saying that it had broken down," said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for the region containing the Swat Valley. "The moment people started pushing the car, he blew it up."

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