Suicide Blast at Pakistan Military Complex

Updated at 9:22 a.m. Eastern:

A suicide bomber killed seven people near a major air force complex in northwest Pakistan on Friday, while an explosion killed 17 on a bus heading to wedding elsewhere in the region, the latest in a surge of militant attacks this month.

The bloodshed has coincided with the run-up and first week of a major army offensive in a Taliban and al Qaeda stronghold along the Afghan border. About 200 people have died as the insurgents have shown they can strike in a variety of ways and places in the nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied nation.

The Pakistan Aeronautical Complex at Kamra is the country's major air force maintenance and research hub.

Some foreign military experts have mentioned it as a possible place to keep planes that can carry nuclear warheads, but the army, which does not reveal where its nuclear-related facilities are, strongly denies that the facility is tied to the program in any way.

A lone suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up at a checkpoint on a road leading to the complex, about 30 miles from the capital, Islamabad. Police officer Akbar Abbas blamed the Taliban for the attack.

The seven dead included two troops. Some 13 people were wounded.

"By targeting the army and its assets, the Taliban and their sympathizers want to destabilize the country and force the military into retreat mode," a senior government official told CBS News' Farhan Bokhari after Friday's blast.

"These people are trying to put the army on the defensive, but there is no backing away now. We must all recognize that things will get much, much worse before they get better," added the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Hours later, a blast struck the bus, which was traveling in the Mohmand tribal region. Four women and three children were among the 17 killed, said Zabit Khan, a local government official, who said the exact cause of the blast was still not certain.

"It appears to be a remote-controlled bomb, and militants might have hit the bus mistakenly," Khan told The Associated Press.

Mohmand, like other parts of Pakistan's tribal belt, has been a magnet for Taliban militants. The military has carried out operations there in the past aimed at clearing out insurgents but trouble still flares.

Also Friday, a car bomb exploded in the parking lot of a recreational facility in Peshawar, the main city in the northwest. Fifteen people were wounded. The facility includes a restaurant, a swimming pool, a health club and a marriage hall.

"It is part of the violence we are seeing across Pakistan these days," said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the region's information minister.

There have been at least nine major militant attacks this month, most against police or army targets.
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Some have been explosions, while others have involved teams of gunmen staging raids. In one of the most brazen attacks, gunmen attacked the army headquarters close to the capital and held hostages inside the complex for 22 hours.

On Thursday, an army Brigadier and his driver, also a soldier, were gunned down in their car in what appeared to be a targeted assassination in the Pakistani capital.

The complex at Kamra or its workers have been targeted at least once before. In December 2007, a suicide car bomber struck near a bus carrying children of Pakistan Air Force employees, wounding five of them.

A senior Western defense official, who also spoke to Bokhari on the condition they not be named, warned that Pakistan is home to many strategic defense installations, "which do not have foolproof security. Not every place can be equipped with water tight security."

Pakistan has long insisted its nuclear program is safe and secure, and has sought to protect it from attack by militants by storing the warheads, detonators and missiles separately in facilities patrolled by elite troops.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently expressed confidence in Pakistan's nuclear safeguards, but analysts are divided on how secure the weapons are. Some say the weapons are less secure than they were five years ago.

Security plans aside, much could depend on the Pakistani army and how vulnerable it is to infiltration by extremists, according to some observers. One possible scenario that could endanger the program would involve militant sympathizers getting work as scientists at the facilities and passing information to extremists.

Pakistan is estimated to have between 70 and 90 warheads, according to Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists.

Shaun Gregory, an expert on Pakistani security at the University of Bradford in Britain, said in a recent interview that militants have struck near an air base in Sargodha, where nuclear missiles are believed to be stored, and the Wah cantonment, where missiles that could carry nuclear weapons are believed to be assembled.

He added that the attacks did not appear to have targeted nuclear weapons, but said there is evidence of threats to the program.

Pakistan is under intense pressure to eliminate Islamist militant groups sheltering in its northwest that also attack U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The military has battled them in various districts, losing hundreds of soldiers, but questions remain about its overall strategic commitment to the fight.

It began its current offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region seven days ago.

A military statement Friday reported two more soldiers were killed, bringing the army's death toll to 20, and that 13 more militants were slain, bringing their death toll to 142. Reporters are blocked from entering the region, meaning verifying information is all but impossible.

The United Nations says 110,000 people have fled South Waziristan in recent months as speculation rose of an army offensive, about 30,000 of them in the last few days. Most are staying with relatives or in rented homes in Dera Ismail Khan and nearby districts.

New arrivals said the Taliban were preparing for a fight.

"We saw no ground forces on the way, nothing except helicopters and airplanes. But we saw a lot of Taliban movement," said Awal Jan, a refugee from the town of Sarwakai. "They were roaming around in their vehicles and digging trenches in the mountains."

The army has previously moved into South Waziristan three times since 2004. Each time it has suffered high casualties and signed peace deals that left insurgents with effective control of the region. Western officials say al Qaeda now uses it and neighboring North Waziristan as an operations and training base.