Surgeon general of Pakistan army among 11 killed in two bombings

Eight persons, including surgeon general of the Pakistan Army, his guard and driver, were killed and several injured when a suicide bomber struck staff car of Lt-Gen Mushtaq Ahmed Baig at the busiest crossing on the Mall Road near army headquarters in garrison city of Rawalpindi Monday afternoon.

Reports from the troubled Balochistan province said that three paramilitary soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Dera Bugti district.

According to eyewitnesses, a young boy aged 15-18 years, was sitting at the footpath and as soon as the car of Lt-Gen Baig, a celebrated eye specialist, stopped at the signal he rushed to the vehicle and blew himself outside the car at 2:50 p.m. (local time). Besides three military personnel including the surgeon general, five civilians were killed in the incident.

Four persons died on the spot while four others succumbed to injuries in the nearby Combined Military Hospital. Twenty persons were seriously injured in the bombing, officials said. Eyewitnesses said that most of the civilians killed or injured in the bombing were traveling in a public service pickup van, which had stopped close to the car of the army officer. Dozens of vehicles were also damaged in the blast while windowpanes of the nearby buildings were broken.

Lt-Gen Mushtaq Ahmed Baig was a very humble person and a thorough professional surgeon and people from all over Pakistan visited him for the chronic eye ailments. "He was an expert eye surgeon and a humble person," said Akhtar Ali Gondal, who has been visiting Lt-Gen Baig for treatment of his eyes a couple of years. "I received treatment from nearly a dozen eye specialists in Lahore but could not recover, because none of them could diagnose the problem. When I visited Lt-Gen Baig, on the very first day he told me that I was not suffering from myasthenia gravis as I had been told by all other eye specialists I consulted," said a saddened Gondal, adding that he fully recovered after receiving treatment from the slain surgeon for a couple of months.

This is the first suicide bombing in Pakistan, where hectic political activity is going on for formation of new government after February 18 elections. Five suicide bombings have been carried out by terrorists against the security personnel in Rawalpindi since September 2007. A bus of the Army Medical Corps was attacked in January.

Lt-Gen Mushtaq Ahmed, who hailed from a village in Chakwal district of Pakistan's Punjab province, had graduated from King Edwards Medical College, Lahore. He got commission in the Army Medical Corps in January 1976 and was appointed the surgeon general of the Pakistan Army with promotion to the rank of a lieutenant general on February 8, 2007.

Lt-Gen Baig was one of the senior Pakistan Army officers who came from middle class families and reached the top position in the army. In recognition of his services in the field of medicine, he was conferred with Hilal-e-Imtiaz (Military).

Lt-Gen Baig, who was living a few hundred meters away from the scene of the blast, has left behind a widow, three sons and one daughter to mourn his death.

Meanwhile, at least three paramilitary soldiers were killed and four others wounded when a remote-controlled roadside bomb blew up an army vehicle in Lehri town of Dera Bugti district in the troubled Balochistan province, reports said. A militant group, which identifies itself as the Balochistan Republican Army, reportedly claimed the responsibility for the attack.