Sunni militant killed in Pakistan; bomber held

TANK, Pakistan, Mar 8 (Reuters) Gunmen killed a prominent member of a banned Sunni Muslim militant group in northwest Pakistan today in a drive-by shooting that bore the hallmarks of a sectarian killing, police said.

In a separate incident, police in a northwestern town said they had a arrested a cousin of a fugitive pro-Taliban militant who was planning a suicide attack.

The Sunni militant, Masroor Alam Alami, was gunned down by two men on a motorbike as he walked to work in the town of Dera Ismail Khan, 270 km southwest of Islamabad.

Alami was a member of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan militant group, which has been responsible for numerous sectarian attacks on minority Shi'ite Muslims.

''He had walked just a few yards from his house when the attackers sprayed him with bullets and then fled on their bike,'' said police officer Bahawal Khan.

Alami had been accused of killing rival Shi'ite Muslims in the past, but was released due to lack of evidence, police said.

Thousands of people have been killed in attacks by rival Sunni and Shi'ite militants in Pakistan since the 1980s.

Shi'ites make up about 15 percent of the Sunni majority country's population.

Police in the nearby town of Tank said they had foiled a suicide bombing with the arrest of Wahidullah Mehsud, a cousin of fugitive militant leader Abdullah Mehsud, who had been assigned to carry out a suicide attack.

''We recovered a suicide bomber's jacket with 30 kg (66 lb) of explosives, a detonator and switch,'' said police officer Amir Abdullah. His target was not known.

Pakistan has been in the grip of a security scare in recent weeks after a series of bomb blasts in various parts of the country killed dozens of people.

The wave of bombings, including suicide attacks, followed a mid-January air strike on militant compounds in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

REUTERS AKJ HT1605