PAKISTAN TALIBAN

The Pakistani Taliban said Sunday the group had sent a husband and wife suicide squad to carry out an attack on a police station in northwestern Pakistan that killed 10 people.
The pair entered the police station in Kolachi late Saturday and said they were there to lodge a complaint, said Imtiaz Shah, a senior police official. Once inside, the two attacked with grenades and machine guns, triggering a five-hour standoff with the police.
Both attackers, including the woman wearing a burqa, eventually blew themselves up. They killed eight police officers and two civilians, said Mohammad Hussain, another police official.
“This shows how much we hate Pakistani security institutions,’’ Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location. Ahsan claimed it was the first time the militant group had used a woman suicide bomber. However, Pakistani officials said a woman suicide bomber wearing a burqa attacked a World Food Programme food distribution centre in northwestern Pakistan late last year, killing 45 people. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack in city of Khar but never said it was by a woman bomber. Still, that was believed to be the first attack by a woman.