ISLAMABAD—A bomber blew himself up in an Islamabad bank on Monday, killing a security guard in the first suicide attack in the Pakistani capital for nearly two years.
The attack comes with Pakistan on edge weeks after US Navy SEALs found and killed Osama bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad, two hours’ drive from Islamabad, in a case that humiliated the seemingly all-powerful military.
Police said the bomber tried to enter a branch of the Silk Bank in the capital’s I-8 sector, but detonated his explosives when the guard put up resistance.
“It seems to be a suicide attack, we have found the head and the body parts of the bomber,” city police chief Wajid Durrani told reporters on the spot.
“One security guard is confirmed dead while two others are injured,” he told AFP, estimating that the bomber was aged 24 to 25 years old.
The front of the bank was badly damaged and hoardings smashed. Pieces of human flesh were scattered on the floor and several cars parked outside were also damaged, said an AFP reporter.
“I was returning from lunch when I heard a deafening noise,” Chaudhry Yassir, who works in another bank nearby, told AFP.
“I saw the guard. It’s difficult to describe his condition. He was being rushed to the hospital but there was no hope.
“The same building has a wedding hall in the basement but there was no function at the time of the blast,” Yassir added.
Islamabad is the most heavily protected city in the country and Monday’s suicide attack was the first in the capital since December 2009, when a bomber attacked Pakistan’s navy headquarters, killing one person.
On Sunday, a roadside explosion wounded three men near Malpur village just outside Islamabad. Police said the device had long been buried.
Although bombings in the past have targeted embassies, hotels and restaurants, the capital has been shielded in recent years from much of the Taliban- and Al-Qaeda-linked violence that affects the country’s northwest.
Nearly 4,500 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks based in the tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007.
Islamabad was the scene of two political killings earlier this year. In March, minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who opposed Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law, was shot dead in his car.
In January, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, was assassinated by one of his guards outside a coffee shop, also for calling for amendments to the same blasphemy law.