Pakistan Suicide Bombs Kill 16, Wound 150

Two suicide car bombs killed 16 people and wounded about 150 others in separate attacks in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, just days after the Taliban warned suicide strikes were coming if the military pressed forward with an offensive. A third bomb injured four in the restive region.

A suicide bomb was detonated outside a bank affiliated with the army in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), police said. Ten people were killed and 79 wounded, said Sahibzada Mohammed Anis, a senior government official.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw vehicles overturned by the blast, buildings gutted and glass scattered everywhere. Most of the casualties were customers in the bank or people outside.

"We saw body parts in the car and our investigation confirms it was a suicide attack," said Malik Shafqat, a police official in Peshawar. He said the attacker also threw a hand grenade before detonating the bomb but it didn't explode.

A suicide blast also hit a police station in the province's Bannu district earlier Saturday, killing at least six people and wounding nearly 70 others, police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack.

A third bomb exploded in the northern town of Gilgit, wounding four people, Pakistan's SAMA news channel quoted local police Chief Ali Sher as saying. He described it as a "low-intensity bomb" but provided no further details.

Security officials warned the attacks demonstrated the revival of the Taliban's determination to resume a bloody bombing campaign.

"We have stepped up security considerably in the past few months. There are checkposts at different locations. For someone to be able to drive through these (checkposts) and strike is a matter of concern" one senior Pakistani official told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari on condition of anonymity. "The security arrangements will be reviewed but there will also be a review of how these people exactly planned and carried out these attacks" he said.

The attacks came after last month's death of Baitullah Mehsud, the strongest leader of the Taliban movement in Pakistan, who was killed in a suspected missile strike by a U.S.-operated pilot-less drone.

Mehsud's death was followed by a blood feud to nominate a successor in which by some accounts at least 50 people were killed. "It is clear that the Taliban have overcome the loss of Baitullah Mehsud, and are willing to strike anywhere with impunity" the security official told Bokhari.

Two days ago, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan said it was ready to stage more suicide attacks in the region after it was ousted from the Swat Valley in July by an army offensive.

Qari Hussain Mehsud - known for training Taliban suicide bombers - warned of more attacks in an AP interview at a secret location in North Waziristan on Thursday, just hours before U.S. missiles hit the area and killed 12 people.

"We have enough suicide bombers and they are asking me to let them sacrifice their lives in the name of Islam, but we will send suicide bombers only if the government acts against us," he said in the interview.

The U.S. has fired dozens of missiles from unmanned drones to take out top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in the northwest over the past year. Although Pakistan routinely protests the strikes, it is widely believed to secretly cooperate with them.

A CIA drone attack felled former Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud on Aug. 5.

Qari Hussain Mehsud phoned the AP to claim responsibility for the police station attack Saturday. "We have broken the silence as the government did not understand the pause in attacks, and from now there will be an increase in the number of suicide bombings," he said.

He urged civilians to stay away from police and security force installations.

Taliban attacks surged in the region last week. Militants ambushed a convoy of prominent anti-Taliban tribal elders in Bannu district on Thursday, spraying their cars with gunfire and killing nine people. Pakistani authorities have urged tribal elders to speak out against the Taliban, and in turn the militants have killed scores of local leaders.

North West Frontier Province's information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said the attacks would not deter the government from fighting militants. He said security forces had arrested 40 would-be suicide bombers in recent months in the northwest, thwarting efforts by the Taliban to create chaos.

"It is not only our duty ... to fight this menace of terrorism, it is a responsibility of the whole world," Hussain told reporters in Peshawar. "We are on the front line today, that's why our blood is being shed."

On Thursday Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari co-chaired (with U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown) a gathering of Pakistan's main donors in New York, trying to persuade them to provide more financial assistance to the country as it claims to battle the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Pakistani leaders have said that Pakistan needs billions of dollars in assistance to overcome high levels of poverty. Some of the poorest Pakistanis are believed to have been driven by their extreme impoverishment to join the Taliban.

On Saturday, a senior Western diplomat based in Islamabad, speaking on condition of anonymity after the two attacks in NWFP, warned that forcing back the Taliban from the Swat Valley did not appear to have begun breaking down the militant movement.

"These two attacks have brought back a long established lesson: Blocking these militants from Swat did not mean, every one of the Taliban and their sympathizers are out of business," the diplomat told CBS News' Bokhari. "The Taliban are mostly from the NWFP and they are part of the local population. Eliminating them will take time."