Islamabad, October 27: Two gunmen opened fire on an army officer and his mother Tuesday in Pakistan’s capital but no one was hurt, police said. The attack was similar to one last week that resulted in an army officer’s death.
Islamist militants in Pakistan have staged several assaults in recent weeks against security forces, apparently to retaliate for the army’s offensive in their stronghold of South Waziristan, a tribal region along the Afghan border.
Last Thursday, gunmen on a motorcycle fired on an army jeep in another part of Islamabad. A brigadier and a soldier died in that attack, while the soldier driving the car was wounded. It was believed to be the first assassination of an army officer in the capital, signaling a potentially new tactic by militants.
Senior police official Khan Khurshid Khan said a senior army officer — whose rank he did not specify — and his mother were headed to a bank when gunmen on a motorcycle attacked Tuesday.
A windowpane of the car was broken, he said. Television footage showed three bullet holes in a wall in the residential neighborhood. The car was on the move when the gunmen attacked, Khan said. The assailants escaped.
The army moved into South Waziristan more than a week ago vowing to crush the Pakistani Taliban, a militant network it says is behind 80 percent of the suicide bombings in Pakistan.
An army statement Monday said soldiers were progressing on three fronts in South Waziristan, but were meeting resistance on all of them. It said that over the previous 24 hours, 19 militants and six soldiers were killed.
Independent verification of army claims is very difficult because the military has blocked access to the region.
Militant attacks in Pakistan have surged this month, killing more than 200 people, as the Taliban have tried to avert the offensive.
The army has deployed some 30,000 troops to South Waziristan to take on an estimated 12,000 militants, including up to 1,500 foreign fighters, among them Uzbeks and Arabs. The U.N. says some 155,000 civilians have fled the region.
—Agencies