Suicide attacks soar in Pakistan since 2007

updated 2:55 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Suicide attacks have killed almost 1,200 Pakistanis since July last year, most of them civilians, according to military statistics released Monday that highlight the ferocity of the militant threat facing the country.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting between Pakistani troops and insurgents on the Afghan border has sent some 20,000 Pakistanis fleeing into Afghanistan, the United Nations reported.

Under U.S. pressure, Pakistan launched a military offensive in its Bajur region in early August against Taliban and al-Qaida militants blamed for rising attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fierce fighting has raged ever since.

"In the last two weeks alone, over 600 Pakistani families (around 20,000 people) have fled into Afghanistan," the U.N. refugee agency said in a statement.

"While the vast majority of them are living with their relatives and friends, there are already some 200 families who live in the open air."

The families have fled to Afghanistan's Kunar province, which is itself plagued by fighting between militants and Afghan troops backed by coalition forces.

500,000 displaced in Bajur?
Pakistani officials say the fighting in Bajur has displaced as many as 500,000 people within the country. Most have found shelter with relatives across northwestern Pakistan, though about 100,000 are living in camps.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has seen a surge in attacks by Islamic extremists since the July 2007 army siege on militants in Islamabad's radical Red Mosque, where about 100 people died.

Pakistani security officials regard the siege in the heart of the previously mostly peaceful capital as a watershed moment in the country's struggle against militancy.

The most recent major attack was the Sept. 20 suicide truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, which killed at least 54 people, including three Americans.

Figures released at a military briefing in Islamabad showed 88 suicide attacks have taken place across Pakistan since the Red Mosque siege, killing 1,188 people.

Of that figure, 847 were civilians, while the rest were troops and police. More than 3,000 were listed as injured.

The number of attacks in that 15-month period is more than twice as many as in the previous five years, according to a database compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, an India-based terrorism research Web site.

The military statistics showed 1,368 members of the security forces had died since 2001, when former President Pervez Musharraf sided with the United States in its war on terror.

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