Suicide Bomber Kills 8 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber struck in an upper-class neighborhood of the capital on Saturday night, killing at least eight paramilitary security officers posted at a camp set up on a main road for the protection of the area’s foreign diplomats and well-to-do residents.Also on Saturday, an American worker for the United Nations who was kidnapped near the Afghan border more than two months ago was freed, according to Jennifer Pagonis, a United Nations official. Ms. Pagonis said that the worker, John Solecki, had been released south of Quetta.The suicide attack occurred at 8 p.m. Senior police officials had been warning for more than a week that suicide bombers had entered the city.Pakistani officials were unnerved because the attack appeared to have been slightly more involved than other recent suicide missions here, which were thought to have been carried out by lone bombers, according to an official with the Interior Ministry who spoke on the condition of anonymity. At least two people appear to have staged the attack on Saturday, one of them a gunman who the official said fired shots after the bombing.Security in the capital has been a major concern for the authorities after two major commando-style attacks in the last month in Lahore that were believed to have been carried out by the Pakistani Taliban. The Taliban and their supporters with Al Qaeda have made increasing inroads into Pakistan outside their enclaves in the tribal areas.The deputy inspector general of police in Islamabad, Bani Yaman, said that the attack on Saturday took aim at the tent camp of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force used for security services.Residents in houses several hundred yards away said they heard gunfire immediately after the blast set off by the suicide bomber. The paramilitary forces at the camp began shooting after the attack, Mr. Yaman said.The violence was a block from the United Nations’ offices here.“There was a huge blast at the left side of my house,” said a nearby resident, who asked for anonymity. “There was firing for four or five minutes, probably panic firing by the Frontier Constabulary chaps.”Police and paramilitary forces have been making more efforts to protect facilities of foreign governments, diplomats said. But a senior Western diplomat, who declined to be named for fear of offending the Pakistani government, described the efforts as “well meaning but desultory.”Mr. Solecki was seized Feb. 2 by gunmen who killed his driver in the southwestern city of Quetta in Baluchistan. A suspected separatist group, the previously unknown Baluchistan Liberation United Front, claimed responsibility and threatened to kill Mr. Solecki if the government did not release more than 1,000 imprisoned members of Baluchistan separatist groups. An intelligence official in Quetta said no prisoners were released.In a recent video delivered to a news agency, Mr. Solecki said he was ill. On Saturday, Ms. Pagonis described his condition as “O.K.”“He’s tired, but he’s coherent,” she said.In Pakistan’s tribal areas on Saturday, a missile attack by a remotely piloted aircraft operated by the United States killed 11 foreign militant fighters in North Waziristan amid signs that the truce between the government and militants in adjacent South Waziristan might be breaking down, Pakistani intelligence officials and local residents said.Hours after the aerial attack, a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into a group of people on a road near Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan, killing at least eight people including children, residents and officials said. The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, has said in the past that his fighters would use suicide attacks in retaliation for strikes by the American aircraft.In Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, militants loyal to the Taliban leader Maulvi Nazir took up positions on Saturday near a building where soldiers were stationed, a local resident allied with the militants said. In another part of South Waziristan, which is almost entirely under the control of Mr. Mehsud, militants who work with him were digging trenches, apparently preparing for a showdown with the Pakistani Army, an intelligence official said.Intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the militants were angered by the recent increase in American attacks in Waziristan, which they said their government was quietly condoning. The truce in South Waziristan has been in place since 2007.