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Pakistan Arrests 35 for Bombing of US Troops

   VOA News 04 February 2010
   Site of school bombing in Pakistan

Photo: AP

   A  boy  is  seen  through  a damaged window of a school at the site of
   Wednesday's  roadside  bombing  in  Shahi Koto, a village of Pakistani
   district Lower Dir, 04 Feb 2010

   Pakistani  officials  say they have arrested 35 suspects in connection
   with  a  bombing  that  killed  three  American  soldiers in northwest
   Pakistan.
   Police   official  Naeem  Khan  said  Thursday  Pakistani  police  are
   questioning  the  suspects  to  determine who orchestrated the suicide
   attack.
   Officials  said  the  Wednesday blast that also killed four Pakistanis
   was  caused  by  a  car  bomber  and  not  a  roadside bomb as earlier
   reported.
   Three  of the Pakistani victims were schoolgirls, and the fourth was a
   local soldier. More than 60 others were wounded in the blast.
   The  three  Americans  killed  in  the  attack were military personnel
   traveling to the opening ceremony of a girls' school that recently was
   renovated with U.S. assistance.
   Pakistan's Taliban later claimed responsibility for the bombing.
   District police officer Mumtaz Zareen told VOA that militants exploded
   the  bomb  just as the soldiers' convoy passed the school in the Lower
   Dir  district  near Swat Valley, a well-known former stronghold of the
   Taliban.
   A  statement  from  the  U.S.  embassy  in Islamabad said the American
   military  personnel  were  part  of  an  ongoing training program with
   paramilitary troops in the northwest.
   Pakistani and U.S. officials have condemned the attack.
   U.S.  Special  Representative  to  Pakistan  and  Afghanistan  Richard
   Holbrooke  said  U.S.  officials  do not believe the American trainers
   were  directly targeted.  He also rejected Taliban claims that the men
   were  employees  of  the Blackwater security firm, and said he expects
   officials will release the identities of the dead after their families
   are notified.
   No  U.S. combat troops are officially stationed in Pakistan.  U.S. and
   Pakistani officials say the American military personnel were part of a
   small  unit  training  soldiers of the paramilitary force known as the
   Frontier Corps to better fight al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

   Some information for this report was provided by AP.

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