By IANS/AKI,
Islamabad : At least one person was killed and three injured when the suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a naval compound here Wednesday, officials said.
Militants from a group known as ‘Ghazi force’ are believed to be the prime suspects in the suicide attack.
According to eyewitnesses, the suicide attacker blew himself up when naval guards stopped him at the entrance of the headquarters and the blast shattered the windowpanes of nearby buildings and vehicles.
Senior officials of the Pakistani Special Investigation Group (SIG), a highly trained anti-terrorism branch of the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency, immediately rushed to the scene of the attack.
After their initial investigation officials blamed the Ghazi force for the attack.
The Ghazi force is a militant group named after Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, a deputy leader of Islamabad’s Red Mosque, who was among at least 100 people killed in a military operation there in July 2007.
The militant group is comprised of about 130 students from the Red Mosque religious school. They are understood to have previously carried out several high profile attacks against security forces in Islamabad.
The Ghazi force is believed to be responsible because tight security on the main highways is preventing tribal militants from travelling to Islamabad from the volatile North-West Frontier Province or from the southern Punjab.
However, the former students of the Red Mosque Islamic school Jamia Faridia are still based in villages near Islamabad and the city of Rawalpindi and can reach their targets comparatively easily.
This is consistent with the militants’ psychological war on the Pakistani security apparatus and militants’ demand for peace negotiations in South Waziristan near the Afghan border.
In November Pakistani police arrested Jamshed alias Tahir, the alleged mastermind of a Taliban suicide attack on the UN World Food Programme offices that killed five people in October.