Explosion targets school bus in Peshawar

[Robb]

Source: DAWN (Pakistan)

PESHAWAR: A bomb struck a Pakistani school bus on Monday, killing a mechanic and wounding two children as they were being dropped home after class in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said.

It was the fifth bombing in Pakistan since last Monday as the country steps up security for the holy month of Muharram, which typically sees a rise in sectarian tensions and attacks on Shia Muslim religious processions.

(snip)

The windows of the bus from the Islamia Model School – a fee-paying English-language school – were punched out in the blast, the vehicle blackened by fire and a nearby shop damaged in the blast, said an AFP reporter.

Driver Gohar Ali said there were only two girls left on the bus because all the others had already been taken home.


Read more: http://www.dawn.com/2010/12/13/explosion-targets-school-bus-in-peshawar.html

[Lasher]

1. What kind of pricks promote their cause by hurting little schollchildren?

These are evil people. Nothing whatever could possibly justify such an action. We should do the exact opposite of what they want, just on principle.

[Igel]

3. Depends.

It was a fee-based school, so mostly better-off parents would be able to send their kids there.
Answer: Class-warriors.

It was an English-language school, which has certain class overtones but also makes Pakistani nationalists gnash their teeth and wail like a Wizard of Oz witch being given a flea dip.
Answer: Pak nationalists

It quite possibly didn't primarily serve locals. There are a fair number of better-of Punjabis in Peshawar that work for government, Army, and other institutions.
Answer: Pakhtun nationalists.
Alternatively, Baloch nationalists.

It didn't hew to the proper Muslim line (where "Muslim" is defined to be one of the 1 billion people worldwide that adhere to the one Islam that exists, but which Islam nonetheless clashes with the Islam that many of these apparently non-Muslims believe).
Answer: Muslim nationalists (I can't bring myself to write "ummists" or "ummatists").

It was a school not under the control of the Taliban. Competition with the One True Educational Establishment is not permitted by Allah, as judged appropriate and justly sentenced by his divine and righteous servants the infallible Taliban and their supporters.
Answer: Taliban and their supporters.

It was a school that had female students. This is just wrong and merits death for the girls, the teachers, the parents of the students, the parents of the teachers, those who built the school and their relatives, those who fund the school and their relatives, whoever dared to touch one of the educated girls. . . .
Answer: Taliban or their supporters.

[Lasher]

5. Glad you agree.

There couldn't possibly be the slightest justification whatever. I say track them down, then napalm their asses. But first mace them. Then blackjack them. Napalm their asses to a cinder after that.

[denem]

2. No "Think-of-the-Children" US citizens worried.

Blow 'em up as long as there's no nudity.

[Alamuti Lotus]

4. "targets" is an irresponsibly chosen and misleading phrase for a headline

Administration official Siraj Ahmad said the bomb was a crudely made device similar to those used to deadly effect by Taliban militants against US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan and government troops in northwest Pakistan.

“It was a roadside explosion caused by an IED (improvised explosive device). The school bus was very close by, that’s why it damaged the bus,” Ahmad said.

“The bomb was planted (on the roadside) but we’re investigating what the real target was, because police also patrol this area,” police official Mohammad Ijaz Khan told reporters.