Top Pakistani Army Medic Killed in Suicide Blast

It will be interesting to see how Pakistan's new government will respond to the taliban. A 16 year old suicide bomber kills a top army medic, and several others.

SLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed the Pakistani army's top medical officer and seven others in the city of Rawalpindi on Monday in the first bomb attack outside the violence-plagued northwest since last week's elections.

The chief of the army's medical corps, Lieutenant-General Mushtaq Ahmed Baig, was the most senior military officer killed by militants to date.

He died with two of his staff and five passers-by a week after largely peaceful parliamentary elections raised hopes that a civilian government might be able to stem a rising tide of militant violence.

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"The general was on his way home and his car was stopped at a traffic light. The bomber was on foot and blew himself up there," said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema.

He said the bomber was about 16 years old and also killed five civilians and wounded 12 others.

The Pakistan military headquarters is in Rawalpindi, adjacent to the capital, Islamabad, and several major attacks on the military and security agencies have taken place there since the middle of last year.

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and more than 20 of her supporters were killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack as she left a rally in the city on December 27.