Bombers kill 59 at arms factory

The new civilian government was criticized by the U.S. for making peace deals with militants.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Suicide bombers killed 59 people at an arms factory Thursday in one of Pakistan’s deadliest terror attacks, adding to turmoil from political squabbling that is threatening to tear apart the ruling coalition now that Pervez Musharraf has quit as president.

Just hours before the blasts, a key party in the coalition threatened to quit in a power struggle that has dismayed many Pakistanis and the country’s Western backers.

The twin bombings, which also wounded 70 people, hit one of Pakistan’s most sensitive military installations and underlined the threat posed by Islamic militants to the Muslim world’s only nuclear-armed nation as well as its war-ravaged neighbor, Afghanistan.

Workers were streaming through two gates of the tightly guarded factory complex in Wah, 20 miles west of Islamabad, during a shift change when the bombers attacked outside the walls. The force of the explosions knocked many people to the ground and sprayed others with shrapnel.

“I looked back and saw the limbs of my colleagues flying through the air,” said Shahid Bhatti, 29, his clothes soaked in blood.

“It was like a doomsday,” said Ghaffar Hussain, whose nephew was killed.

Emergency workers with plastic bags on their hands lifted mangled and blackened corpses onto stretchers, while forensic teams picked through scraps of flesh and scattered shoes.

Tanvir Lodhi of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories said 59 people died. Seventy others were wounded, said Mohammed Azhar, a hospital official. Some 25,000 people work at the complex, making rifles, machine guns, ammunition, grenades and tank and artillery shells.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani appealed to lawmakers to urgently draw up a national strategy against terrorism “even if you have to sit together for a week.”

“The threat that we are facing today has no precedent,” he said before the bombings, addressing a ceremony for police officials who received counterterrorism training through the U.S. State Department. “Our enemy lurks silently within our society. This is our war.”

President Bush called Gilani to express sympathy for those killed in recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

The two men “reaffirmed their mutual support for going after these extremists that are a threat to both Pakistan, the United States and the entire world,” said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council.

Musharraf, who also received a call Thursday from Bush, resigned Monday to avoid the humiliation of impeachment after nearly nine years in power that began with a boodless coup.

While the former military commander was considered a vital member of Washington’s war-on-terrorism coalition, the new civilian government drew U.S. criticism for giving priority to striking peace deals with militants when it came to power five months ago.

The peace effort was popular with many Pakistanis who are angry over the conflict’s toll on civilians. But it has met only limited success, and the government is again pursuing military operations against militants in the rugged region along the Afghan border.

Maulvi Umar, a spokesman for Pakistani Taliban groups, told The Associated Press that the arms factory attack was to avenge airstrikes on militants in Bajur, an extremist stronghold in the mountainous frontier region.

More bombings will be carried out in major cities, including the capital and the southern metropolis of Karachi, unless the offensives are halted, he said.

The two main parties, led by Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, worked together to hound Musharraf into quitting.