 KHAR, Pakistan: Masked gunmen hurled grenades and opened fire on a government pickup truck in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least four people, including a senior intelligence agent and two of his aides, officials said.
The attack occurred on a road in Bajur, a Pakistani tribal region bordering Afghanistan, said Mowaz Khan, a security official in Khar, the main town of Bajur where Islamic militants have been blamed for attacks on security forces in the past. In the attack on a road near Khar, two men wearing masks and riding a motorcycle threw two grenades at the official vehicle and then opened fire, killing the intelligence official and three people at the scene, Khan said.
BBC sez: Unidentified gunmen have shot dead four officials from Pakistan's secretive ISI intelligence agency in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan, officials say. Two others were wounded in the attack in the Rashkai area of Bajaur agency, local authorities said. The dead included an Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) assistant director, Mohammad Sadiq, alias Major Hamza.
Khan and an intelligence official in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, said four people were killed in the assault. The intelligence official declined to be named because he was unauthorized to speak to the media. But another security official, who also requested anonymity for the same reason, said that three people were killed in the grenade and gunfire attack, including the senior intelligence officer and two low ranking agents.
The differing accounts on the death toll could not be immediately reconciled. | Trying to decide who gets his office |
The driver of the pickup was wounded, Khan said. Two passers-by in another car were also injured in the shooting, the Peshawar-based intelligence officer said. The attackers fled. "Who was that masked man?"
"I don't know, but I forgot to thank him." |
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