Suicide attacks on Islamic university in Pakistan kill 6

Salman Masood

ISLAMABAD ? The International Islamic University here, one of the country's premier schools, prides itself as a unique center of learning that combines "the essentials of the Islamic faith with the best of modern knowledge," its website says.

So on Tuesday afternoon, when two suicide attackers struck this conservative, gender-segregated campus simultaneously, killing six people, many of the students and residents of Islamabad were perplexed.

The attackers' bombs ripped through a cafeteria for female students, two of whom were among the dead, and destroyed an office in the sharia and law department in a second building. Dozens were wounded.

"When I heard that it was Islamic University, I wondered why an Islamic institution would come under attack," said Erum Yasser, 32, a New Jersey homemaker who was visiting Islamabad. The answer, she figured, was that the militants just needed a target and had stopped caring what the target was.

Attacks such as this one, following far larger ones in the past two weeks at security installations and in crowded marketplaces, have increasingly soured public opinion of the Taliban.

While anti-Americanism still runs high, and while there remains support for some militant groups that are considered allies of the state, there also is support building for the military's campaign to squeeze the Taliban militants who have used Pakistan's tribal areas as a base to train and dispatch their suicide bombers.

Syed Fakhr Hasan, 24, a student at the university who is pursuing a master's degree in Arabic and who is a member of the youth wing of an Islamic political party, said the attackers were maligning the name of Islam.

Pakistani officials, including the country's interior minister, Rehman Malik, were quick to link the attacks to Pakistani military operations in South Waziristan, where thousands of troops began a ground offensive against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces Saturday.

Guerrillas there recaptured the birthplace of Pakistan's Taliban leader from the Pakistani army Tuesday, inflicting the heaviest military losses so far in Pakistan's high-stakes offensive.

A government attempt to foment a tribal uprising against the Pakistani Taliban also failed Tuesday.

In a meeting with the top Pakistani official for the tribal areas, elders of the area's Mehsud clan refused a request to form a traditional militia, known as a lashkar, to battle the Taliban, which has taken over their territory.

McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.