US Consulate in Karachi was next target of Benazir's murder suspect

Peshawar, Jan 22 : A teenage suicide bomber, who was arrested in Dera Ismail Khan for his involvement in the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, has told interrogators that his next target was the US Consulate in Karachi.

Sources said that Aitzaz had confessed during preliminary interrogation that he had been asked to attack Bhutto in Karachi if she escaped the attack in Rawalpindi.

But after Bhutto's assassination, Aitzaz had been directed to move to Karachi to target the US Consulate, they said.

Sources quoted Aitzaz as saying that he had received terrorist training along with two suspects Bilal and Ikram, whose names had been mentioned in the transcript of a telephone conversation intercepted after the assassination of Bhutto in Rawalpindi on December 27.

Meanwhile, police raided an under-construction house of Sher Zaman, an accomplice of Aitzaz, in the Tariqabad locality of Dera Ismail Khan and seized explosives and other material used in suicide vests.

Aitzaz and Sher Zaman were taken to Islamabad for further interrogation, the Dawn reported.

The law-enforcement agencies' personnel raided the house of Aitzaz's uncle Shabbir Hussain Shah in the Battal area of Mansehra and arrested him.

During the interrogation, Shabbir Shah claimed that Aitzaz's family had been living in Karachi for several years, and he had been missing from his house for one year.

ANI