Pakistan beefs up security in capital

Pakistan strengthened security in the capital Islamabad yesterday amid fresh threats of attack following a recent upsurge in deadly Islamist violence and suicide bombings, police said.
Embassies restricted movements of their staff and sent out advisory notices to citizens over fears of a possible copycat attack in the style of last November's siege in the Indian financial capital Mumbai.
The US embassy said that "due to heightened security" routine consular services were suspended in Islamabad on Friday but that staff were "continuing to provide emergency services to any American citizens that require them.
"We advised embassy staff to avoid restaurants, hotels, shopping centres and other public places," embassy spokesman Lou Fintor told AFP.
State media reported that a meeting between school staff and council officials agreed to install special gates and CCTV cameras at entry and exit points of schools, and to control traffic outside the buildings.
"There is a high alert," senior police officer Nematullah Kundi told AFP.
"We have stepped up security in the city, in and around the diplomatic enclave and the area near the parliament building, which is the declared Red Zone," he said.
"Extra guards have also been deployed at schools in the Red Zone and elsewhere in the city," said the officer, who deals with security in Islamabad.
Television footage showed police vehicles dropping concrete slabs on major roads to block the entry of any suspicious vehicles into the Red Zone.
Special walk-through gates have been installed at key government buildings where visitors are scanned before allowing them entry, they said.
Meanwhile, Suspected Taliban militants planted a bomb in northwest Pakistan that destroyed six tankers supplying fuel to Nato troops in neighbouring Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
Around 35 tankers were parked overnight at the Chamkani area, outside Peshawar, when militants placed a bomb under one of the vehicles loaded with diesel, petrol and aviation fuel, police official Asmatullah Khan told AFP.
The blast triggered a fire, which spread to another five tankers, he said, adding that the blaze was only brought under control by Pakistan air force vehicles after local firefighters failed to tame the flames.
"They used a special chemical to extinguish the fire," a security official said on condition of anonymity. The oil tankers, contracted to supply Nato forces, had been parked in an unauthorised area, the official said.
Attacks by extremists who are outraged that Pakistan joined the US-led "war on terror" have killed more than 1,700 people across the country since government forces besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.
The United States has put the nuclear-armed Muslim nation at the heart of efforts to defeat al-Qaeda.
Much of the violence has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan, where the army has been fighting hardline Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists.
Hundreds of Islamists snuck into the country's lawless tribal belt after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001.
Pakistan's central province of Punjab, which surrounds Islamabad, has recently witnessed an increase in attacks targeting security and government installations and places of worship, killing dozens of people.
There have also been three deadly suicide bombings in the wider Islamabad area in just over three weeks.
Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who has a five-million-dollar US bounty on his head, has vowed to unleash attacks to avenge suspected US missile strikes against militants in Pakistan.