Bombers target Pakistan ISI office, 9 dead

Nine people have died after suicide bombers and gunmen stormed the offices of the ISI in southern Pakistan, and a senior police chief has been attacked.

Bombers target Pakistan ISI office, 7 dead

Seven people died when suicide bombers and gunmen stormed the offices of the ISI in south Pakistan.

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 say.

The dead include five attackers and four police and intelligence officials, a spokesman for the paramilitary Rangers told AFP after the attack late on Wednesday in the normally sleepy town.

Officials had previously put the death toll at seven, saying on Wednesday that the five attackers, one intelligence agent and another government official had been killed.

The attack in Sukkur, 1000 kilometres 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 on Thursday.

An intelligence official told AFP that the attack had destroyed the local branch of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and damaged newly-constructed residential quarters for police officers.

State TV said at least 38 people were wounded. It was one of the worst attacks in Pakistan during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

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.

A spokesman for the main government-run Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar said the commander was in a critical condition.

Thursday's attack on the police commander in Peshawar was carried out by people laying in wait on motorbikes, officials said.

The country is battling a Taliban-led domestic insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians and security personnel since 2007.


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Source: AAP


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