PESHAWAR: Pakistan Taliban said on Friday it had attacked a US consulate convoy in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, the latest assault in a surge of violence since US forces killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden this month. Police said a car bomb had been detonated by remote control as the convoy passed, killing one Pakistani. Twelve people were wounded. US embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said two US nationals were among the wounded, with minor injuries. Police said the two were security guards. The attack on the two-vehicle convoy took place on a main road in an area where many Western diplomats live and involved 50 kg of explosives, police said. “There was an attack on a two-car convoy from the consulate in Peshawar. One car was hit. We are still investigating what actually happened,” said Rodriguez. Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali said the blast had been caused by a car bomb detonated remotely. “It was not a suicide bombing,” he said. It was the first attack on Westerners since Bin Laden's death on May 2. Peshawar has seen many operations by Taliban militants seeking to topple the US-backed Pakistani government and was home to Bin Laden in the 1980s when Islamists were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda and its ally, the Pakistani Taliban, have vowed to avenge the killing of Bin Laden by US special forces, and the group said it would target the Pakistani government and its Western allies. “The diplomatic staff of all NATO countries are our targets,” said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Taliban spokesman, said via telephone from an undisclosed location. “We will continue such attacks. Pakistan is our first target, and America is our second.” Many Pakistanis are frustrated with the inability of security forces to subdue the Taliban. In a separate attack on Friday, an explosion killed five people and wounded four in the tribal region of Orakzai in the northwest, officials said. “The security after the killing of Osama has been lax instead of being tighter. We are feeling insecure,” said Tahir Khan, 20, a student standing near the site of the blast in Peshawar. One of the consulate vehicles, which police said was armored, was riddled with shrapnel. The blast forced it to slam into an electricity pole beside a pre-school. “I had just arrived at school and was about to start my work when there was a big blast. The windows of our school were broken and I was hurt,” said school administrator Zahid Zaman from a hospital bed. The Pakistani rupee fell to an eight-month low of 86 to a dollar on Friday. Dealers said the new attack had compounded uncertainty linked to Bin Laden's killing and its aftermath. Meanwhile Pakistan's most populous province has canceled six aid agreements with the United States in protest over the US raid that killed Bin Laden, its law minister said on Friday. “We have cancelled six MOUs (memorandums of understanding) with the United States in the fields of health, education and solid waste management,” said Rana Sanaullah, Law Minister of Punjab, the country's political nerve center. “We have told their concerned departments about our decision. This is our protest against the Abbottabad incident.” The Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) opposition party, which rules Punjab, has called for a review of the country's ties with Washington, urging the central government to reduce reliance on foreign aid.
