Peshawar: A prominent Pakistani warlord who sends men to fight US and NATO troops in Afghanistan was wounded in a suicide attack on Thursday that killed five people and wounded 10 others, officials said.
Mullah Nazir is an elder in the Wazir tribe and the main militant commander in South Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt considered a base for Al-Qaida, the Taliban and other Islamist militants.
He and North Waziristan commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur confine their militant activities to Afghanistan, where they oppose the presence of US and NATO troops.
Nazir’s fighters have been targeted and killed by US drone strikes but he reached a peace deal with Islamabad in 2007 and is said to have testy relations with the Pakistani Taliban, who have been waging a domestic insurgency since 2007.
Details of the attack were sketchy as militants quickly sealed off the scene in the main market of Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, but officials said the suicide bomber had rammed a motorcycle into Nazir’s vehicle.
After the bomb detonated, shooting also broke out, the Pakistani officials said.
One official said five people were killed and 11 wounded, including Nazir. Accounts differed over the gravity of his injuries, but most sources said he was not in danger.
“It is not immediately clear if the dead were all Nazir’s men or included some passers by,” the official said.
“Nazir survived because he had already got out of the car,” he added.
An intelligence official based in the nearby district of Tank put the death toll at four and said at least nine others were wounded.
“Most of those killed and injured were his bodyguards. Mullah Nazir was also injured in the attack but his condition is out of danger,” the official said.
Residents in Wana said the powerful blast damaged shops and shattered windows in a dozen vehicles.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but tribal affairs and militancy expert Rahimullah Yusufzai said that Nazir had a long list of enemies and warned that Thursday’s attack could spark a new wave of bloodshed.
Nazir opposes Uzbek fighters and has had awkward relations with Pakistan’s umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban faction, which is dominated by members of the rival Mehsud tribe.
He has survived attempts on his life in the past and has been an enemy of Uzbek fighters since curbing in 2007 the Uzbek uprising spearheaded by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in South Waziristan, Yusufzai said.
“It is difficult to say who could be behind the latest attack because Mullah Nazir has problems with Uzbeks, IMU and the TTP. Nazir’s men have also been firing rockets on Pakistan army positions in South Waziristan,” he added.
“The enmity with the TTP will rise further if Nazir’s group finds TTP’s involvement in the attack,” Yusufzai said.
