THREE AMERICAN soldiers were killed and two injured in a bomb attack on a military convoy in northwestern Pakistan yesterday that marked a surprise coup for Taliban fighters reeling under a barrage of CIA drone attacks.
Dozens of teenage girls were also caught by the blast, which occurred outside their secondary school in Lower Dir district, killing three of them along with a paramilitary soldier.
The US embassy said the Americans had been assigned to help train the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force deployed in the tribal belt along the Afghan border. Local reporters initially mistook them for western journalists because they were wearing civilian clothes and carrying cameras.
The explosion, apparently a remote-control roadside bomb, occurred as their military convoy passed the Koto girls’ high school, where teenage girls were streaming out for their mid-morning break. Television footage showed distressed villagers scrambling to pull wounded girls from the rubble of collapsed buildings amid scattered books and bags.
The wounded were rushed to the main district hospital at Timergara, where doctors from Médecins sans Frontières said they had treated more than 100 people, most of them schoolgirls.
“Most of them have splinter injuries all over the body – in the face, abdomen and feet,” said Ashraf Alam, chief medical officer at the hospital, speaking by phone. Sixteen of the wounded were seriously injured and three had died, he said. Among those awaiting major surgery was a girl aged about eight or nine. “We are busy in the operating theatre,” he said, excusing himself.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the attack would “only serve to fortify Pakistan’s resolve to eliminate the menace of terrorism”.
The dead and wounded Americans were flown to Islamabad, where the survivors were treated at the city’s al-Shifa hospital amid tight security.
The bombing shone a light on a little-publicised American military programme. The US department of defence sees the Frontier Corps as a key element of Pakistan’s fight against the Taliban in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and has quietly pumped millions of dollars – and dozens of personnel – into an initiative to improve the force’s capability. In most cases the US personnel train senior FC officers – an approach known as “training the trainers”. The attack also highlighted an even less well-known civilian aid programme. A retired senior US official with knowledge of the programme said the department of defence has been discreetly funding development projects such as schools in NWFP for years.
The targeted soldiers may have been going to the school in Dir as “a show of solidarity” with their Pakistani colleagues, he said.
The risks of the trip were vividly apparent in retrospect yesterday.
Lower Dir is one of the most volatile corners of NWFP. Last year the district saw fierce fighting between the army and Taliban fighters spilling out of the neighbouring Swat valley during a major military offensive.
Dir is home to Sufi Muhammad, an elderly Taliban ideologue whose son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, is the fugitive leader of the Swat Taliban. After the operation the army declared that Dir had been cleared of militants.
Also next to Dir is Bajaur, a tribal area bordering Afghanistan that is embroiled in heavy fighting. On Tuesday the army said it had captured a Taliban stronghold and that troops were advancing towards another militant hub in Damadola.
The American casualties will boost Taliban morale in difficult times. Earlier this week Pakistan state television reported that a major Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, had died of wounds suffered during an American drone strike last month. The Taliban has denied the reports, but declined to provide proof of life.
Last autumn the militants were flushed from their South Waziristan stronghold after a sweeping army offensive that forced the leadership to flee into neighbouring North Waziristan, where CIA-controlled drones now strike almost every day.
In the most intense barrage yet, an estimated eight drones fired at least 17 missiles at different compounds and vehicles in North Waziristan yesterday. So far at least 31 people have reportedly died.
At the same time the Taliban has stepped up attacks on schools, with reports of 10 incidents in the last two months. In the most recent assault, on January 18th, militants blew up a primary school for boys in Khyber tribal agency.