Pakistan seizes suspects in Embassy bombings

Pakistan has arrested nine men suspected in a string of deadly bombings last year that wrecked the Danish Embassy, killed an army general and wounded several FBI personnel, police said Thursday.

A police statement said the men had traveled to Waziristan, a stronghold of the Taliban and Al-Qaida near the Afghan border.

Rawalpindi police Chief Rao Mohammed Iqbal told reporters that the men had links with Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan’s top Taliban leader.

Police accused the nine suspects of involvement in the bombing of an Italian restaurant in Islamabad in March. A Turkish aid worker died and at least 12 other people were wounded, including four FBI personnel.

The men also are suspected of involvement in a suicide car bombing outside the Danish Embassy three months later that killed six people. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack as retribution faor cartoons of Islam’s holy prophet published in Danish newspapers.

Police also linked the suspects to a suicide bombing that killed the Pakistan army’s surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Mushtaq Baig, in February and to two other suicide attacks that targeted security forces and killed more than 20 people in Rawalpindi and the nearby capital, Islamabad.

Rao said the suspects also were “affiliated with some Kenyan” and that “their mastermind has already been killed.”