PAKISTAN: Fresh violence in Pakistan, blast kills four

A bomb exploded in a roadside restaurant in the Baluchistan town of Hub, killing four people and wounding up to nine on Tuesday (August 29), police said. "At about 10:00 in the evening I received information of a bomb blast at a restaurant near Nazar roundabout. We rushed to the site, and I saw four people were dead," said district police chief Ghulam Haider Baloch. An eye-witness Sakhi Dad said : "I was on duty as I work at a factory nearby. A man came to me and said there had been a blast at restaurant. Nothing was visible on the site when I rushed there. We are the owners of this restaurant and my three, four brothers work there at the restaurant." Provincial interior minister Shoaib Nausherwani said it was too early to say if the blast was linked to the ongoing protests connected to the Balch rebel leader. Security forces and gunmen clashed on Tuesday in Pakistan's Baluchistan province after prayers for a slain rebel leader and one policeman was killed. Violent protests have erupted across gas-rich Baluchistan since nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was killed on Saturday in a government assault on his cave hideout in the remote hills of Pakistan's biggest but poorest province. Analysts say Bugti's killing is likely to inflame opposition to the government in Baluchistan. It could also stir nationalist sentiment in other provinces and galvanize broad opposition to President Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup. Elsewhere in Lahore, the capital of the central Punjab province, three people were injured when a bomb went off at a parking area. "We will independently investigate all the factors taking into account all the possibilities. It happened last year also in 'Ichchra' market in Lahore, anyone, they hailed from Baluchistan, we are studying it," said police official Khwaja Khalid Farooq. A former provincial governor respected by many, Bugti, 79, went underground this year and joined rebels who have been waging a low-key insurgency for decades seeking autonomy and a greater share of profits from Baluchistan's resources. Government officials said security forces had not targeted Bugti but that he was killed when explosives went off during heavy fighting in a cave, which then collapsed.

ITN Source | August 30, 2006

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