Islamabad, November 06: Gunmen on a motorbike on Friday wounded an army brigadier and soldier in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad before escaping in the third such attack in two weeks, officials said.
The officer and a soldier were shot while travelling in a jeep through the I-8 residential neighbourhood, police officer Mohammad Azhar told AFP.
“Two gunmen riding on a motorbike opened fire on the jeep. Two people in the jeep were wounded. They were taken to hospital,” Azhar said, giving no further details.
A doctor at the capital’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital said the victims were in a stable condition.
“Two army officers, including one brigadier were injured when unknown gunmen opened fire on their vehicle,” Doctor Nasir Ahmad told AFP.
“Both have firearms injuries but both are stable,” he added.
The attack was the third targeting senior army commanders in the capital in around two weeks, as Pakistan wages a major assault against the Tehreek-e-Taliban network in the northwest tribal region of South Waziristan.
On October 22, a Pakistani brigadier on leave from a UN peacekeeping mission was shot dead in the capital Islamabad. There was a similar gun attack on another military jeep on October 27, but no one was wounded.
Friday’s shooting came four days after a suicide bomber killed 35 people outside a bank in Islamabad’s twin city of Rawalpindi, not far from Pakistan’s army headquarters.
–Agencies