Security staff killed in Pakistan suicide bombing

A suicide bomber on a motorbike rammed into a minibus carrying security personnel, detonating a blast today that killed at least six people in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi, police said.

The bus was destroyed and several other people were wounded in the explosion on a road running through a bazaar near the offices of the army’s engineering department, police official Abdul Waheed said.

Police said the army had cordoned off the area.

In recent months there have been a series of suicide bombings in Rawalpindi, a city where the army has its headquarters, about seven miles from the capital, Islamabad. President Pervez Musharraf also stays in the city.

On December 27, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and about 20 others died in a gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi.

Prior to that, a series of attacks hit security forces and employees of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, including two suicide bombings against a bus of ISI employees and an army checkpoint on November 24 that killed up to 35 people.

There have been no claims of responsibility for the attacks, but authorities have blamed Taliban militants based near the Afghan border who pose a growing security threat across Pakistan.