Timeline: Terrorist attacks in Pakistan in May 2011

Pakistani security officials gather beside the destroyed building of the police Criminal Investigation Department following a suicide bomb attack in Peshawar on May 25, 2011. A Taliban suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into a police station, flattening the three-storey building and killing two officers, officials said. Pakistan's Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the northwest. PHOTO: AFP

PAKISTAN: Pakistan has seen a dramatic increase in the scale and number of militant attacks since Osama bin laden was killed by U.S. forces in a garrison town this month.

Earlier on Wednesday, militants drove a car packed with explosives into a police station in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 11 people and wounding 39. The police station was razed to the ground.

Here’s a timeline of attacks since the killing of the al Qaeda leader on May 2, which militants had vowed to avenge:

May 13

Two suicide bombers attacked a Frontier Corps training academy in Charsadda, north-west Pakistan, killing 98 people, most of them cadets boarding buses for home. The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) claimed responsibility, saying it was to avenge the death of Bin Laden.

May 16

Gunmen on motorcycles shot and killed a Saudi diplomat in the southern city of Karachi. The shooting came days after unidentified attackers threw two hand grenades at the Saudi consulate in Pakistan’s commercial hub. No one was hurt in that attack.         Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but Al Qaeda has long waged a bloody campaign to topple the royal family and the government in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of its leader Bin Laden.

May 18

More than 70 militants armed with rockets and mortars attacked a security post on the outskirts of Peshawar, triggering a four-hour gun battle in which 17 people, 15 of them insurgents, were killed. Nobody claimed responsibility for that attack. The same day, suspected Sunni militants gunned down four Shi’ite Muslims in the southwestern city of Quetta which security officials said was aimed at whipping up sectarian conflict to further destabilise the country following the death of Bin Laden.

May 20

TTP attacked a U.S. consulate convoy in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, killing one Pakistani and wounding 12. Two U.S. nationals were among the wounded with minor injuries.

May 21

At least 16 people were killed in Pakistan’s Khyber tribal region after a bomb hit a truck carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed the responsibility. Sixteen NATO fuel trucks were attacked and set on fire a day earlier in the same region.

May 22

A team of heavily armed insurgents stormed a Pakistani navy base in Karachi, setting off a 16-hour battle in which 10 military personnel were killed and two U.S.-supplied surveillance aircraft destroyed.      The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, the biggest on a military installation since a 2009 raid on the military headquarters in Rawalpindi when they held several senior and junior officers hostage.