Suicide blast kills six at Pakistan navy college

LAHORE -- A suicide bomber killed at least six people and wounded 19 in an attack on Tuesday on a Pakistan naval college in the eastern city of Lahore, officials said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a news conference that a mini-bus entered the college when a suicide bomber following closely behind blew up his vehicle.
The bomber killed himself and four others in the initial attack, navy officials said, but two more people died in secondary explosions that followed.
"I saw a fully charred body," a Reuters photographer at the scene said. "A black cloud of smoke was rising from the scene as I reached there."
It was the fourth suicide attack in Pakistan in five days, further unsettling a country already reeling from a bomb campaign waged by Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Over 500 people have been killed in related violence since the start of the year, stoking fears over the deteriorating security situation in the nuclear-armed state.
Tackling the violence will provide a tough test for the incoming government following elections two weeks ago which saw no clear winner emerge, leading to coalition talks between various parties mostly hostile to President Pervez Musharraf.
Television pictures showed damaged vehicles near the bent and buckled gates of the college. Emergency vehicles were seen rushing in and out of the premises.
Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and about 290 kilometres southeast of the capital, has rarely been targeted before, although a suicide bomber killed 19 people, mostly police, in an attack near the High Court in January.
Last week, a suicide bomber in Rawalpindi killed the military's top medical officer, Lieutenant-General Mushtaq Ahmed Baig, making him the most senior military officer to die in the violence to date.
Tuesday's blast in the country's cultural capital and political nerve centre coincided with a visit by U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen for talks with Pakistan's military leadership and President Pervez Musharraf.
Mullen's visit aimed at reinforcing the military relationship with Pakistan, according to embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton.
The West shudders at the thought of Pakistan sliding into chaos. Sections of the Western media have depicted Pakistan as the most dangerous country in the world.
Many Pakistanis believe there is some grand conspiracy to take away Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but realization of the scale of the internal threat is dawning.
The deteriorating law and order situation put pressure on a stock market that remains the best performer in Asia this year, although it is considered difficult and illiquid by many investors.
The index shed 0.5% on Tuesday, though it is up over 3% since the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections and over 5.25% this year.
Elsewhere in Pakistan on Tuesday, five people including four militants were killed in a gunbattle with police near the town of Lakki Marwat in the northwest, police said. The dead included two Uzbek and two local militants.
The shootout, near the town where three police were killed by a roadside bomb on Friday, broke out after militants kidnapped a local councillor and two colleagues.