Friday, October 23, 2009

Report: Suicide attack hits near suspected Pakistan nuke-weapons site

McClatchy reporter Saeed Shah, writing from Islamabad, reports that a suicide bomber attacked a suspected nuclear-weapons site in Pakistan today, "raising fears about the security of the nuclear arsenal."

The report notes that Pakistan's nuclear sites are mostly in the northwest of the country, close to the capital, Islamabad, to keep them away from the border with India.

But that means, the reports says, that they are close to Pakistani Taliban extremists, who are concentrated in the northwest.

Today's attack hit a checkpoint on the boundary of the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, an air force base at Kamra, about 40 miles outside Islamabad, killing eight people, including two security personnel.

McClatchy's report says officials denied that this major research center for the air force has links to the nuclear program. But, the report adds, Pakistan does not specify which sites are involved in the program "and many independent experts think that Kamra is a nuclear air base."

In 2007, the nuclear-missile storage site at Sargodha was attacked and in 2008, a team of suicide bombers blew themselves up at the entrance to the Wah armament factory, which is thought to be one of Pakistan’s main nuclear-weapons assembly locations, the McClatchy report says.

Posted by Doug Stanglin at 12:06 PM/ET, October 23, 2009 in Afghanistan, Politics, Washington

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/20 ... -site.html