Two held over Pakistani capital suicide blasts

ISLAMABAD, Aug 21 (Reuters) Pakistani authorities have arrested two people suspected of involvement in suicide bombings in Islamabad that killed 29 people and a government spokesman said the two were linked to the capital's radical Red Mosque.

Commandos stormed Islamabad's Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, on July 10 to crush a Taliban-style movement based there. More than 100 people were killed in the assault.

A week later, 16 people were killed when a bomber blew himself up outside a court where the country's then suspended chief justice was due to speak. Thirteen people, most police, were killed in a suicide blast near the mosque on July 27.

''Two people have been arrested who were directly involved in these two suicide attacks,'' Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a news conference.

He did not say when the two men were arrested but said both were linked to the hardline mosque, where militants hoarded an arsenal of weapons and explosives, and they had been plotting suicide attacks on Pakistan's Independence Day on August 14.

He declined to give more details of the suspects but said in general, militant attacks had links to the Waziristan region on the Afghan border where Pakistani forces have been trying to clear out or subdue al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

More arrests would soon be made, he said.

''The whole net is now known and we will be able to get hold of those people.'' Pakistan has been facing a surge in violence since mid-July, when, as well as the assault on the Lal Masjid, a 10-month peace deal with militants broke down in the North Waziristan region.

More than 200 people, most of them police and soldiers, have been killed in blasts and clashes, most in Waziristan and neighbouring parts of the northwest.

REUTERS LPB KN1939