ISLAMABAD: A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a special police office, killing a police guard and wounding three other people in Pakistan’s capital during a public holiday yesterday, officials said.
The bomber detonated his explosives at the gate to the police intelligence and bomb disposal unit building, where a guard tried to stop him from entering, near the Sitara market in the center of Islamabad, officials said. “The police official sacrificed his life to save others.
Officially, we have one dead, three wounded,” Islamabad police chief Kalbe Abbas told reporters.
Officials confirmed it was a suicide attack. “The suicide bomber was killed,” interior ministry chief Rehman Malik told Pakistan’s private Geo television, condemning the “terrorist” attack.
Police collected up the parts of the suicide bomber, including teeth set in raw, bloodied flesh splattered yards away from the site of the blast and putting them in a shopping bag, said an AFP reporter. “It was a powerful blast. It shook our shops. People were saying prayers in a nearby mosque when it went off,” shopkeeper Mohammad Bilal told AFP.
Pakistan has been hit by around 200 suicide and bomb attacks that have killed more than 1,600 people since government forces fought radical gunmen holed up in a mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.
Yesterday’s attack came on Pakistan Day, a public holiday that marks the 1940 resolution calling for an independent Muslim state on the subcontinent, seven years before British rule ended and Pakistan was created.
“We ordered a high alert in Islamabad from morning because an investiture ceremony had been scheduled at the president’s house,” Malik said.
