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ISLAMABAD — Suicide bombers killed 59 people at a huge arms factory Thursday in one of Pakistan's deadliest terror attacks, adding to turmoil from political squabbling that is threatening to tear apart the ruling coalition now that Pervez Musharraf has quit as president.
The twin bombings, which also wounded 70 people, hit one of Pakistan's most sensitive and heavily guarded military installations, underlining the threat posed by Islamic militants to the Muslim world's only nuclear-armed country as well as its war-ravaged neighbour, Afghanistan.
Just hours before the blasts, which were claimed by the Pakistani Taliban as a response to army attacks on militants, a key party in the government coalition threatened to quit in a power struggle that has dismayed many Pakistanis and the country's western backers.
Workers were streaming through two gates of the sprawling factory complex in Wah, 30 kilometres west of Islamabad, during a shift change about 2 p.m. when the bombers attacked outside the walls. The force of the explosions knocked many people to the ground and sprayed others with shrapnel.
Policemen and rescuers gather around the body of a blast victim at the site of the suicide blasts at Wah on August 21, 2008. Two suicide bombers killed at least 50 people outside Pakistan's main military arms factory, increasing the security challenges facing the fragile coalition government. (ASIF HASSAN/AFP/Getty Images)
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"I looked back and saw the limbs of my colleagues flying through the air," said Shahid Bhatti, 29, his clothes soaked in blood.
"It was like a doomsday," said Ghaffar Hussain, whose nephew was killed. "We are finished, we are ruined," he said, tears rolling down his face.
Emergency workers with plastic bags on their hands lifted mangled and blackened corpses onto stretchers, while forensic teams picked through scraps of flesh and scattered shoes outside the complex, which employs some 25,000 people making rifles, machine-guns, ammunition, grenades and tank and artillery shells.
Tanvir Lodhi of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories said 59 people died. Seventy others were wounded, said Mohammed Azhar, a hospital official.
Nine days earlier, the Taliban declared "open war" on the military over an offensive against militants in the Bajur region. The declaration was issued after a bomb killed 14 people in an air force truck in Peshawar, the main city of the restive frontier along the Afghan border.
Maulvi Umar, a spokesman for Pakistani Taliban groups, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the arms factory attack was to avenge air strikes on militants in Bajur tribal area, an extremist stronghold in the mountainous frontier region.
More bombings will be carried out in major cities, including the capital and the southern metropolis of Karachi, unless the offensives are halted, he said.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani appealed to legislators to urgently draw up a national strategy against terrorism "even if you have to sit together for a week."
"The threat that we are facing today has no precedent," he said before the bombings, addressing a ceremony for police officials who received counterterrorism training through the U.S. State Department. "Our enemy lurks silently within our society. This is our war."
U.S. President George W. Bush called Mr. Gilani to express sympathy for those killed in recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
The two men "reaffirmed their mutual support for going after these extremists that are a threat to both Pakistan, the United States and the entire world," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House's National Security Council.
Mr. Musharraf, who also received a call Thursday from Mr. Bush, resigned Monday to avoid the humiliation of impeachment after nearly nine years in power that began with a bloodless coup.
While the former military commander was considered a vital member of Washington's war-on-terrorism coalition, the new civilian government drew U.S. criticism for giving priority to striking peace deals with militants when it came to power five months ago.
The peace effort was popular with many Pakistanis who are angry over the conflict's toll on civilians. But it has met only limited success, and the government is again pursuing military operations against militants in the rugged region along the Afghan border.
The attack in Wah was the country's deadliest since former prime minister Benazir Bhutto narrowly escaped a double suicide bombing in Karachi that killed about 150 people at a parade welcoming her back from exile in October. A gun and suicide-bomb attack killed her Dec. 27.
Amid the violence, the coalition government appeared to be veering toward collapse.
The two main parties, led by Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, worked together to hound Mr. Musharraf into quitting.
But before Mr. Musharraf's coup in 1999, the parties fought bitterly over power during years of civilian governments known for corruption and economic mismanagement, and with Mr. Musharraf gone many people think their alliance will unravel.
Since Monday, the parties have publicly squabbled over who should succeed Mr. Musharraf and over how to restore Supreme Court judges he fired last year.
Mr. Sharif's party threatened Thursday to leave the ruling coalition unless the judges are quickly reinstated. Zardari's Pakistan People's Party, which leads the coalition, appeared to be lining up smaller parties to keep control of parliament.
"The future of this coalition is linked to the restoration of judges," Mr. Sharif's spokesman, Sadiqul Farooq, said. "If the judges are not restored, we will prefer to sit on opposition benches."
Mr. Sharif, bitter over this 1999 ouster and exile by Mr. Musharraf, has pressed hard for the return of the judges, which he sees as potential allies for his campaign to charge Mr. Musharraf with treason.
But Mr. Zardari, widower of the slain Ms. Bhutto, is less enthusiastic, worrying that legal action against the former president would be a destabilizing move. Like Mr. Musharraf, he has accused former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry of being too political.
Analysts say Mr. Zardari also might fear that Mr. Chaudhry would revive corruption cases against him. Mr. Musharraf killed off the cases against Mr. Zardari and his wife as part of a failed effort to form a pro-western power-sharing deal with Ms. Bhutto before her assassination.
