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Huge blast kills at least 30 in Pakistan
A suicide bomber killed 30 people outside a bank near Pakistan's capital Monday, the latest in a wave of attacks by militants since the army launched a new offensive against them last month.
The growing violence in the country prompted the U.N. on Monday to suspend long-term development in Pakistan's volatile northwest, complicating international efforts to counter the allure of Islamic extremism by improving people's lives.
NBC News reported that the attack in Rawalpindi, a garrison city located only a few miles from Islamabad, involved a suicide bomber on a motorcycle. The bomb was detonated near the National Bank of Pakistan, where people were lining up to collect their monthly pay. The explosion also damaged a nearby hotel, witnesses said.
The site is not far from the headquarters of Pakistan's army.
"It was a huge blast. Smoke is rising from the scene," Nasir Naqvi, who runs a travel agency near the site of blast, told Reuters.
The 30 people dead included military personnel, Rawalpindi police chief Rao Iqbal said. Some 45 others were wounded.
"The bodies were lying all over," said Ali Babar, a rescue official who was doing a refresher course at a nearby college and rushed to the scene to help. "This is a terrible thing. It is happening again and again."
Pakistan's president, prime minister and other top officials condemned the blast but vowed to continue the offensive in South Waziristan, an impoverished and underdeveloped tribal region next to Afghanistan where al-Qaida is believed to have hideouts.
Barbaric
In a statement, Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that "such barbaric, inhuman and un-Islamic terrorist acts only strengthen our resolve to fight terrorism with more vitality."
Militants killed some 250 people in attacks in October.
The U.S. has urged the Pakistani government to persevere with the offensive against the militants, who have used the border region as a sanctuary to launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The blast came as the Pakistan government announced rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture, dead or alive, of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud and his top aides.
The announcement of the bounty on Hakimullah's head was made through newspaper advertisements as security forces zeroed in on his Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Taliban Movement of Pakistan) strongholds in South Waziristan.
"These people are definitely killers of humanity and deserve exemplary punishment," read the front-page advertisement, with photographs of Hakimullah and seven senior lieutenants in The News.
"Help the government of Pakistan so that these people meet their nemesis."
A reward of over $600,000 was announced for Hakimullah, his top aide Wali-ur-Rehman, and his cousin, Qari Hussain Mehsud, who is known as the mentor of suicide bombers.
The trio spoke last month to a group of journalists in Sararogha, a major Taliban base in South Waziristan, but have not been sighted since.
Security forces have captured Kotkai, the birthplace of Hakimullah and hometown of Hussain, in the Waziristan offensive, and on Sunday the military said it was on the outskirts of Sararogha and Makeen, also strongholds of Hakimullah.
In the deadliest militant attack in more than two years, over 100 people were killed and scores more wounded on Wednesday when a car bomb detonated in a crowded market in the northwest frontier city of Peshawar.
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Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps
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