Sudan UN peace mission head assassinated in Islamabad

Militants shot and killed Brigadier Moin-ud-din Ahmed, deputy force commander of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), who was on vacation in Islamabad.

'Everyone in the mission is very shocked,' Kouider Zerrouk, UNMIS spokesman told Reuters. UNMIS, one of the world's largest UN peacekeeping missions with around 11,000 personnel, was set up to monitor and support the 2005 peace deal than ended the two-decade civil war between Sudan's north and south.

Ahmed, whose rank is equivalent to a US brigadier-general, one step below a full one-star general, is the second senior officer to be killed in less than two weeks following a commando-style raid on army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

A shopkeeper, Naveed Haider, said he saw a man running, his face covered with a yellow cloth, before he heard gunshots.

'A man with a motorbike was waiting for him on the street. He sat on it and they fled,' the witness said before taken away by police for questioning. Police said Brig. Haider's driver was also killed and a bodyguard wounded.

Pakistani forces launched an offensive on Saturday to take control of lawless South Waziristan after militants rocked the country with a string of bomb and suicide attacks, killing more than 150 people.

Analysts have warned of the possibility of more urban attacks as the militants are squeezed out of their strongholds, with the Taliban hoping bloodshed and disruption will cause the government and ordinary people to lose their appetite for the offensive.