Prometheus 6

In choosing the target, the Taliban singled out a symbolically important industry, and one that Pakistanis thought was virtually impregnable, General Masood said.

Suicide Attack at Pakistan Arms Plant Kills 60 People
By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — More than 60 people were killed Thursday when two suicide bombers attacked Pakistan’s largest weapons manufacturing complex just north of the capital, the deadliest attack by the Taliban in their escalating campaign against the government.

The attack came just days after the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, leaving two rival political parties in the governing coalition haggling over the question of succession and adding a new layer of turbulence to an unstable, nuclear-armed nation. Neither party has been anxious to take on the campaign against the militants, which is seen here as an American conflict foisted on the country.

The ordnance factories, in the town of Wah just off the main road that connects Islamabad to the northern city of Peshawar, make up Pakistan’s biggest industrial complex, with 20,000 employees, according to retired Gen. Talat Masood, a former chairman of the factories. Run by the Ministry of Defense, the complex, Pakistan Ordnance Factories, consists of more than 16 factories that make ammunition of all kinds, as well as rifles, pistols, explosives and acid, mostly for export.