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Updated Friday, November 13, 2009 4:40 pm TWN, By RIAZ KHAN, AP



	Soldiers gather at the scene of a suicide bombing in Peshawar, Pakistan on Friday, Nov. 13, 2009. A suicide car bomb devastated Pakistan's main spy agency building in the northwest Friday, killing at least 7 people and striking at the heart of the institution overseeing much of the country's anti-terror campaign. (AP) Enlarge Photo

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Attacks kill 16 in Pakistan, spy agency targeted

Friday's attack in Peshawar was the second to target a spy agency complex this year. A suicide squad using guns, grenades and a van packed with explosives attacked a police and an ISI building in Lahore in May, killing 30 people.

The ISI has been involved in scores of covert operations in the northwest against al-Qaida targets since 2001, when many militant leaders crossed into the area following the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. The region is seen as a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden.

Its offices in Peshawar are on the main road leading from the city to Afghanistan. The agency was instrumental in using CIA money to train jihadi groups to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Despite assisting in the fight against al-Qaida since then, some Western officials consider the agency an unreliable ally and allege it still maintains links with militants.

Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are waging a war against the Pakistani government because they deem it un-Islamic and are angry about its alliance with the United States. The insurgency began in earnest in 2007, and attacks have spiked since the run-up to the offensive in South Waziristan.

A car bomb exploded in a market in Peshawar at the end of October, killing at least 112 people in the deadliest attack in Pakistan in over two years. On Oct. 10, a team of militants staged a raid on the army headquarters close to the capital, Islamabad, taking soldiers hostages in a 22-hour standoff that left nine militants and 14 others dead.

The U.S. has urged Pakistan to persevere with its South Waziristan offensive because militants have used the area as a base to attack Western troops across the border in Afghanistan.

Militants have also targeted convoys in Pakistan delivering supplies to soldiers in Afghanistan.

Attackers fired rockets at a group of tankers near the southwestern city of Quetta on Friday that were delivering fuel to U.S. and NATO troops. One driver was killed and five tankers were torched, said local police chief Bedar Ali Magsi.

About 80 percent of all nonessential supplies to Western forces in Afghanistan are trucked through Pakistan after landing at the Arabian Sea port of Karachi. NATO and U.S. officials say the attacks do not affect their operations.

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