ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Two assailants on a motorbike fired on a Pakistani Army jeep amid heavy rush-hour traffic Thursday morning, killing a brigadier and his driver, a security official said.
The assassination of the brigadier, Moinudin Ahmed, was believed to be the first targeted attack on a senior military officer in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and also suggested a new tactic in the ongoing war between the government and Islamist militants. Until now, the military has been able to mostly move freely through the capital.
The assailants fired with automatic weapons at the jeep, which was not bulletproof, and then disappeared into heavy traffic, according to witnesses. The attack took place around 9:30 a.m. in the G-11 neighborhood of the capital.
The attack appeared to be a direct reprisal against the army’s current offensive against militants in the rugged tribal region of South Waziristan.
Another soldier also was injured in the attack, according to a military spokesman.
The brigadier returned to Islamabad a few days ago from Sudan, where he was leading the Pakistani contingent attached to the United Nations peacekeeping force, according to an Islamabad police official. He was on his way to Rawalpindi when he was attacked.
Pakistani officials said the brigadier assumed charge as head of the Pakistani contingent of the peacekeeping force in Sudan almost nine months ago. Prior to this, he was serving at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi as deputy director general of military operations. Earlier this year, he had been involved in the planning of military operations in Swat and Bajaur. He was also involved in the Red Mosque operation in Islamabad in 2007 when government troops fought militants holed up inside the mosque and madrasa compounds.
“Investigators are looking into this angle,” an official said while speaking on condition of anonymity.
Late Thursday night, Pakistani Interior Ministry ordered a 72-hours deadline to illegal Afghan residents to leave the capital. A door-to-door search was also ordered in three residential neighborhoods of the city. The police in Islamabad also released sketches of the assailants, which showed them to be young men in early twenties.
The army continued to make slow progress in the mountainous terrain of South Waziristan, battling Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in the Mehsud heartland where the government says most of the recent terrorist attacks have been organized.
The killing of the brigadier and his driver is the latest in a string of seven attacks over the past 18 days in Pakistan against major government and security installations.
On Tuesday, Taliban militants killed six people when they struck a student cafeteria and an academic building at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Schools in Islamabad and Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, as well as elsewhere in Pakistan, remained closed Thursday in the wake of that attack.
