Veteran ANP leader and Senior Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bashir Ahmad Bilour was assassinated after a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest near Qissa Khwani Bazaar on Saturday evening. The attack also claimed the lives of eight other persons, including the SHO of Khan Raziq police station, Abdul Sattar Khattak, and secretary to senior minister Haji Noor Mohammad. As many as 18 others were injured in the attack.
According to police, the blast occurred after the culmination of a public meeting held in Dhaki Nalbandi, near Qissa Khwani Bazaar. The injured were rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH). According to eyewitnesses, the blast occurred just as the senior minister, accompanied by security personnel, was leaving the venue of the public meeting.
The senior minister was critically injured in the blast and was rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital, but he did not survive because of the severity of his wounds. According to hospital sources, Bashir Bilour received critical injuries on his chest and belly.
Officials of the Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU) confirmed that the explosion was a suicide attack and claimed finding the suspected attackers' legs and other body parts. They estimated that at least four kilograms of explosives had been used in the attack. President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the terrorist attack and directed the hospital administration for providing best possible medical care to the injured.
Bashir Ahmad Bilour was among top ANP leaders and was also a former provincial president of the party. He remained undefeated since the 1990 elections and had survived two previous suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Mian Iftikhar Hussein, the spokesperson of the provincial government, said that they were on terrorists' hit-list and such incidents had become a matter of routine. He said that terrorists pardoned no one. Expressing deep grief and sorrow over the incident, he called for negotiations among United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan to stop terrorism.
AFP adds: The bomber struck when around 100 people including the provincial leadership of the Awami National Party (ANP) had gathered at a meeting in the city of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The blast killed Bashir Bilour, the number two to the chief minister of the province. A week ago a Taliban suicide car bomber and militants armed with rockets attacked Peshawar airport, a joint military-civilian facility, killing five people. A day later police and troops fought a fierce gunbattle with Taliban fighters who fled after the airport attack and holed up in a building, taking six hours to quell the militants.
The 69-year-old Bilour, a fierce opponent of the Pakistani Taliban, suffered severe injuries in Saturday's blast and died in hospital. A notice on the information board of Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital also announced Bilour and seven others were dead and said 18 people were injured in the attack. Bilour had "wounds to the chest and stomach. We tried our best to save his life" but he died during surgery, Arshad Javed, a senior doctor at the hospital told AFP.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said they targeted Bilour in revenge for the death of one of their elders. "We claim responsibility for killing Bashir Ahmed Bilour. It is revenge for the martyrdom of our elder Sheikh Naseeb Khan," TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP.
Khan was a teacher at a madrassa where many Taliban members were educated. Bilour's brother Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, the federal railways minister, sparked international condemnation in September when he offered $100,000 to anyone who killed the maker of a highly blasphemous anti-Islam film.
The TTP said they had taken him off their "hit list" after he offered the bounty and in Saturday's statement stressed they had struck Bashir Bilour while his brother was not with him. Bomb squad experts said the suicide bomber detonated his explosives when the meeting was at its peak. "The suicide bomber walked into the house where the meeting was taking place and detonated his vest," Shafqat Malik, chief of the bomb disposal squad, told AFP. Zahidullah, 30, a shopkeeper in the area, said he was standing to Bilour's rear when the bomber struck. "The meeting was about to finish when I heard a noise and soon afterwards I saw a blue flame and then the blast hit," he told AFP. Asif Iqbal, a senior police official, told AFP the dead also included Bilour's secretary and a policeman, as well as ANP workers. Four policemen were among the wounded.