ISLAMABAD, 30 March 2007 — A suicide bomber attacked one of the most fortified cantonments of Pakistan Army in Kharian yesterday killing himself and a soldier and wounding eight others.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack in the garrison town, 90 kilometers southeast of Islamabad, but suspicion was bound to fall on militants believed to have carried out a string of similar attacks since January.

A military intelligence source told Arab News the bomber was identified as an Uighur.

The army’s Inter-Services Public Relations Directorate said the attack took place at 12 noon.

“After finishing their training, they were resting when the bomber walked up to them and blew himself up,” said military spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad.

Last November, a suicide bomber killed 42 army recruits as they rested after training in the northwestern town of Dargai. That blast was blamed on extremists taking revenge for an army attack on a militant camp a few days earlier.

Pakistan has been battling Al-Qaeda-linked militants and pro-Taleban insurgents on its border with Afghanistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

In January, the Pakistan Army launched an airstrike on a militant training camp in the South Waziristan region, near the Afghan border, killing about 20 people. Since then, about 45 people have been killed in blasts that security officials see as revenge for that airstrike.

Bombers, including suicide attackers, have struck security forces, a court, a top hotel in Islamabad and the city’s airport.

Soldier Kills Two Fellow Troops

A soldier shot two fellow troops to death and wounded four others yesterday after an argument at a military base in a tense tribal region near Afghanistan, an intelligence official said.

The soldier went on a shooting rampage with his rifle in a fit of rage at the base in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his job.

Two troops were killed and four wounded before the shooter was injured by return fire, he said.

The 24-year-old had an argument with other troops, the official said without elaborating.

It was unclear what sparked the shooting, but the soldier was reportedly under stress, the official said.

Tension has been high in South Waziristan following clashes last week near Wana between local tribesmen and suspected Central Asian militants.

Officials said more than 100 people, many of them foreign fighters, were killed in several days of fighting.

Members of the unit involved were from the South Waziristan Scouts, a security force consisting of men recruited mainly from ethnic-Pashtun tribespeople in the area. Militants have targeted security forces’ bases and soldiers’ convoys with rockets and roadside bombs. Pakistan is a key US ally in its fight against terrorism, and says it has deployed some 80,000 troops along its border with Afghanistan to track down militants.