DEATH TOLL RISES TO 9 IN ATTACK ON PAKISTAN’S ISI
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, July 25, 2013 (AFP) - The death toll has risen to nine from a suicide car bomb attack on Pakistan's top intelligence agency and police living quarters in the southern town of Sukkur, officials said Thursday.
The dead include five attackers, and four police and intelligence officials, a spokesman for the paramilitary Rangers told AFP after the attack late Wednesday in the normally sleepy town.
Officials had previously put the death toll at seven, saying Wednesday that the five attackers, one intelligence agent and another government official had been killed.
The attack in Sukkur, 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of Islamabad, is likely to revive fears that the reach of Islamist militancy is spreading in the nuclear-armed state of 180 million.
“We rounded up several people on Wednesday night after the attack and are interrogating them,” the Rangers official said.
An intelligence official told AFP that the attack had destroyed the local branch of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and damaged newlyconstructed residential quarters for police officers.
State TV said at least 38 people were wounded. It was the worst attack in Pakistan during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan so far.
Also on Thursday, gunmen ambushed a senior police commander as he headed to work in the northwestern city of Peshawar, seriously wounding him and killing his bodyguard and driver, officials said.
The country is battling a Talibanled domestic insurgency that has
The dead include five attackers, and four police and intelligence officials
killed thousands of civilians and security personnel since 2007.
Officials blamed Islamist militants for Wednesday's attack, confirming that they do have a presence in the Sukkur area.
Police said the attackers stormed the complex as people were eating after sundown, detonating two bombs outside the police building and the ISI office.
The ISI is Pakistan's most powerful spy agency and has been attacked several times in the past by Islamist militants, although such violence in Sukkur is extremely rare.