Yesterday’s attack that killed three US soldiers who were traveling in a convoy in northwestern Pakistan was carried out by a suicide bomber, and was not caused by a remotely detonated roadside bomb as first reported. The suicide attack suggests that the Taliban, who took credit for the attack, had inside information on the presence of US troops in the convoy.

The three US soldiers, who have been described variously as Special Operations Forces and civil affairs troops training Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps, were killed when a suicide bomber driving a car rammed into their convoy as it traveled to the opening of a girls’ school in the district of Lower Dir.

The three soldiers were among nine people killed in the attack; three Pakistani girls, a Pakistani Frontier Corps soldier, and two civilians were also reported killed, and more than 130 Pakistanis, most of them girls at a high school near the attack, and two more US soldiers, were wounded.

The attack indicates that the Taliban received intelligence on the convoy’s movements and knew exactly which car to hit. The suicide bomber stalked the convoy and appeared to know which car was carrying the American soldiers.

“As soon as the convoy appeared it rushed to that place and exploded,” a resident of the village of Shahi Koto who witnessed the attack told The Associated Press.

The US soldiers were traveling in an armored vehicle that “was equipped with electronic jammers sufficient to block remotely controlled devices and mines,” and was in the middle of a convoy of vehicles from the Frontier Corps, The New York Times reported.

US military and intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal suspect that the Taliban were given specific intelligence to carry out the attack, but these sources do not yet have concrete evidence to back up the claim. Nor would they speculate on who may have provided the intelligence to the Taliban.

“This attack was too perfect, they laid in wait for the convoy to pass and knew exactly which vehicle to hit,” a US military officer familiar with the details of the attack observed.

“Suicide attacks in Dir are not that common,” a US intelligence official familiar with the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province said. “I don’t believe they got that lucky and by chance struck gold with their first suicide attack [in Dir] in almost two months.”

“The very rare suicide attacks in Dir have followed a pattern,” the intelligence official continued. “In the past, they [The Taliban] have used suicide attacks to intimidate the tribes who sought to eject the Taliban.”

The last suicide attack in Dir took place on Dec. 18, when the Taliban blew up a mosque frequented by police and security officials.

Dir is a district in the Northwest Frontier Province that borders the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of Bajaur, under the command of Faqir Mohammed. Dir also borders the district of Swat, where the military has been waging a counterinsurgency against the Taliban under the command of Mullah Nazir. The Taliban use Dir as a transit point to cross into Afghanistan and wage attacks against Coalition Forces in the northeast.

Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the banned pro-Taliban Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed [TNSM, or the Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammed’s Law], is from Lower Dir. Sufi, who is in Pakistani custody, engineered the Taliban official takeover of Swat and neighboring districts in February 2009. During the preceding two years, the Taliban unofficially controlled Swat and neighboring Shangla. The overt Taliban takeover of Swat invited international condemnation and forced the Pakistani Army to move into the district in force in April 2009.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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