Seven arrested over 2009 attack on ISI office

Police arrest seven militants involved in the 2009 attack on the ISI office.

MULTAN: Police on Thursday said they had arrested seven militants involved in a suicide attack that targeted the offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence in 2009.

In the attack in Multan on December 8 2009, two suicide attackers fired on soldiers while driving a pick-up truck packed with explosives past security checkpoints in an attempt to approach the local office of the ISI, officials said.

When challenged, the attackers detonated their car bomb prematurely, killing five civilians, two soldiers and themselves and blowing a massive crater in the road.

"We have arrested seven people involved in attacking the ISI office," district police chief Sayed Abid Qadri told reporters.

Police said the attackers include Abdur Rahim alias Talha, a bomb-making expert who was working as a Taliban leader in Punjab.

He said the seven had also confessed to a plot to attack an empty residence of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in Multan, but that report could not be verified by high security officials in Islamabad.

Ministry of Interior officials also said they were "not aware" of such a plot.

"They were also plotting to attack other sensitive installations," Qadri said, without elaborating.

Police said all the accused were arrested three days ago at a house, following an informer's tip-off.

More than 3,700 people have been killed in a series of suicide attacks and bombings, many of them carried out by the Taliban and other al Qaeda-linked groups, in Pakistan during the past three years.