Kerry: 2 local US consulate workers killed in Pakistan blast

Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that two Pakistanis working with the U.S. Consulate in the northwestern city of Peshawar were killed by a roadside bomb while on a mission to eradicate drug cultivation.

Kerry told an audience at the State Department that he had awakened to news that the pair had been killed along with an unknown number of Pakistani troops, who were guarding the mission. He lamented the deaths as senseless and denounced the perpetrators.

A Pakistani government administrator said a roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying Pakistani officials working for a USAID-funded project for the eradication of poppies in the northwestern tribal region of Anbar on Tuesday, killing two of them and wounding four others.

Naveed Khan said he did not know whether those killed or wounded were also working for the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar.

"I can only confirm that a Pakistani inspector working for a USAID-funded project was killed along with his driver in an IED blast today," he said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.

Khan said the two were working in the Narcotics Affairs section of a government department.

Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for Jamatul Ahrar a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

 

AP