ISLAMABAD — Police yesterday arrested another suspect in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a senior police investigator said.

“Yes, we have arrested a suspect and we are interrogating him,” said the investigator, who declined to be identified. He identified the suspect as Abdul Rashid but declined to give further details. Private Geo Television said Rashid was suspected of providing “arms and ammunition” to those involved in the attack on Benazir.

The two-time prime minister was killed in a gun and bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi on Dec. 27 as she left an election rally. Television footage showed a man firing three shots from a pistol at Benazir moments before a bomb went off. Pakistani and US intelligence officials have blamed Baitullah Mehsud, an Al Qaeda-linked militant commander based in a tribal region on the Afghan border, for the assassination.

Police said besides the bomber, identified as Saeed, alias Bilal, four other militants were present in and around the venue of the rally in Rawalpindi.

Police said on Wednesday that two militants, Hasnain Gul and Rifaqat, were arrested last week and had confessed to giving a pistol and a suicide-bomb vest to the bomber. Two of the five militants who were at the scene of the attack were still at large, they said.

10 Militants Arrested

Police have arrested 10 militants in Karachi suspected of planning terror attacks during next week’s general election, a minister said yesterday. “These militants were ex-members of different banned militant outfits who had now formed a new group,” Sindh Home Minister Akhtar Zamin told Reuters. He did not say when the men were detained. Zamin said police seized explosives, electrical circuits, compact discs and other material from the militants. “They may have been planning to attack some political leader, or carry out other acts of terror during the election, and to destabilize the peace of the country,” he said.

Ambassador Remains Untraced

Authorities have so far failed to recover Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin, who went missing in Khyber Agency while traveling from Peshawar to Kabul. A leader of Khyber Agency, Mangal Bagh, who commands support of Afridi and Shinwari tribesmen told a private TV channel, “Azizuddin is not in Khyber and it is not our tradition to abduct civil servants.” Khyber Agency sources told Arab News the ambassador was being kept in Afghanistan by his captors.

Meanwhile, a paramilitary soldier, Abdul Samad Khan, was killed and another wounded yesterday in a pre-dawn gunbattle with militants in the Darra Adam Khel region.

Court Rejects Petitions

The Supreme Court of Pakistan yesterday rejected two petitions challenging President Pervez Musharraf’s re-election in 2007. Petitions were filed by Zafar Mehdi and Tikka Iqbal. A full bench headed by Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar rejected the petitions.

Earlier, the top court validated the imposition of the state of emergency by President Musharraf on Nov. 3 that empowered him to issue a provisional constitutional order and reconstitute courts. The court delivered a 110-page detailed judgment in two petitions challenging the imposition of emergency and PCO. The judgment was written by Chief Justice Dogar, Supreme Court sources said. The detailed verdict said that the president, federal government and Election Commission of Pakistan would ensure the holding of free, fair and transparent elections.

— With input from agencies