Zardari security chief killed in Karachi after 'suicide attack' on his convoy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/10/zardari-security-chief-killed-karachi

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A trusted aide of Asif Ali Zardari was on Wednesday killed in a suspected suicide bombing in the port city of Karachi as he stopped his armoured vehicle to buy fruit, police have reported.

An officer said that Bilal Shaikh, security chief to Pakistan's president, was killed along with two others in a prosperous area of eastern Karachi.

"It seems that the suicide attacker walked up to [his] vehicle and blew himself up outside the front passenger seat of the vehicle where Shaikh was seated," the officer, Raja Umar Khattab, told Reuters.

About a dozen other people were wounded in the city, Pakistan's financial capital.

A police escort was accompanying Shaikh's white armoured sports utility vehicle when the bombing happened. Police said an unidentified attacker walked up to the car and blew himself up just as Shaikh opened the car door to get out.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place on the eve of Ramadan, which is observed in Pakistan from Thursday.

Pakistan has had a spate of bombings since Nawaz Sharif was sworn in as prime minister in June this year, underscoring the challenges facing the nuclear-armed nation in taming a Taliban-linked insurgency.

The latest wave of attacks across the country brought an end to a period of relative calm after Pakistan's transition between elected civilian governments which brought Sharif to office for the third time, as leader of the Pakistan Muslim League, in elections in May.

Last weekend at least five people were killed when a bomb ripped through a busy restaurant street in Lahore, wounding dozens as people ate dinner in the old part of Sharif's home city.

On 30 June at least 28 people were killed in the south-west city of Quetta when a suicide bomber attacked a largely Shia Muslim neighbourhood, highlighting growing sectarian tensions among the country's 180 million-strong population.

Shaikh, who had survived an earlier assassination attempt near his home in Karachi about a year ago, used to alter his routes several times while travelling around one of Pakistan's most violent cities.

Like Zardari, he belonged to the Pakistan People's party, which had been in power before the May election. Taliban-linked militants had previously targeted the secular party.

Both Zardari and Sharif issued separate statements condemning the attack, a private television channel reported.

It was the first attack in Karachi since late June, when at least nine people were killed as a bomb, aimed at the convoy of a senior judge, exploded in the old city. The judge, Maqbool Baqar, survived. Pakistan-based Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack.

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