RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Two separate attacks in Pakistan killed at least 11 people on Monday, including the country’s surgeon general, the highest-ranking military officer to die in an attack in years, according to government officials.
The first attack occurred in Rawalpindi, the garrison city near Pakistan’s capital, said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, chief spokesman for the Pakistani army. A suicide bomber approached a cluster of cars stopped at an intersection in the city’s center and detonated an explosives-laden vest.
The blast instantly killed Pakistan’s surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Mushtaq Ahmad Baig, his driver and his guard, Abbas said. Five others were killed and 20 others injured.
Abbas said Baig, a three-star army general and the principal of Pakistan’s army medical college, was the highest-ranking officer killed since Pakistan joined the U.S.-led war against terrorism in 2001.
Within hours of the bombing, gunmen attacked the offices of an international aid organization in restive North-West Frontier province. The assailants opened fire on several workers at the offices of Plan International before detonating a grenade, said Mazhar-ul-Haq Kakakhel, a district police officer in the city of Mansehra.
Details of the attack remained unclear Monday night. According to a statement on Plan International’s website, the gunmen used three “explosive devices,” killing three staff members. Other reports said four had died.
The attacks Monday marked the first major eruption of violence since Pakistan’s leading opposition parties won last week’s parliamentary elections and announced their intention to begin talks with extremists.
On Sunday, a top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, declared through a spokesman his group’s readiness to begin negotiating with the new government to end hostilities. But the promise came with a warning — that anything less than a sharp break from the policies of President Pervez Musharraf could have dire consequences.
