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Journalism of Courage
A suicide bomber killed the Pakistani army8217;s top medical officer and seven others in the city of Rawalpindi on Monday in the first bomb attack outside the violence-plagued northwest since last week8217;s elections.
The chief of the army8217;s medical corps, Lieutenant-General Mushtaq Ahmed Baig, was the most senior military officer killed by militants to date. He died with two of his staff and five passers-by a week after largely peaceful parliamentary elections raised hopes that a civilian government might be able to stem a rising tide of militant violence.
8220;The general was on his way home and his car was stopped at a traffic light. The bomber was on foot and blew himself up there,8221; said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.
He said the bomber was about 16 years old and also killed five civilians and wounded 12 others.
The blast was outside an office of the government8217;s national data registration agency, on a main road crowded with mid-afternoon traffic.
8220;I can see pieces of flesh littering the road and four damaged vehicles,8221; a witness said, adding police and troops cordoned off the site of the attack.
Aid agency attacked
In a separate incident, unidentified attackers fired shots and threw a grenade into an office of a foreign aid agency, Plan International, in the northwest town of Mansehra, killing four people and wounding nine in the attack and a blaze that resulted, officials said. The dead and injured were all Pakistanis.
Top Taliban Man held
A top Taliban leader believed to be close to Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and part of the inner core of Mullah Omar8217;s coterie has been arrested in Lahore where he had come to 8216;collect8217; funds. Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a former defence minister in the Taliban8217;s Majlis-e-Shura or executive council, was arrested in Lahore, the Daily Times reported on Monday. Obaidullah, who was living in a posh locality in Lahore and meeting businessmen, was arrested following a tip-off and taken to an unknown location, the sources said. The militant leader was the Taliban8217;s defence minister in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, when the US toppled the Taliban regime in Kabul.
