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Pakistan tries to identify suicide bomber who killed 21 policemen

Other News Materials 11 January 2008 13:26 (UTC +04:00)

( dpa ) - Pakistani investigators were on Friday trying to determine the identity of a suspected suicide bomber who blew himself up among a group of riot police in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore a day ago, killing at least 21 officers and three civilians.

"We have collected suspect's badly damaged head and part of face from the scene and sent it for face reconstruction to the plastic surgery department of the King Edward Medical University," said Chaudhry Tassaduq Hussain, a senior police officer and the head of a seven-member team of investigators constituted to probe the incident.

"When the plastic surgery is completed we will prepare sketches for publication in media," he said, adding that two legs, hair, teeth and nails of the bomber have also been collected which will be used for DNA test.

The bomber walked up to dozens of policemen deployed outside the High Court building and set off a belt packed with 14 kilograms of explosives and four kilograms of metal pieces on Thursday. More than sixty people, many of them policemen, were also injured.

The attack was the latest in a series of suicide bombings that have targeted security forces, which are fighting the pro-Taliban militants and al-Qaeda terrorists in the country's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and parts of North-West Frontier Province. In 2007, Pakistan saw 56 suicide attacks that left 741 people dead.

The country has deployed 100,000 soldiers in tribal areas to contain militants from launching cross border attacks on international forces in Afghanistan. Pressing Pakistan to do more against the militants, Washington has also indicated that it might cross into the tribal region to hunt al-Qaeda fighters.

But President Pervez Musharraf warned on Friday that any such attempt would be considered an "invasion."

"If they come without our permission, that's against the sovereignty of Pakistan. I challenge anybody coming into our mountains," he said in an interview with Singapore's Straits Times.

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