ISLAMABAD — A suicide blast killed the Pakistani military's top medical officer and seven others on Monday, as key US "war on terror" ally President Pervez Musharraf rejected fresh pressure to step down.
The attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi was one of three separate incidents Monday that marked a resurgence in violence after a lull during elections last week which saw Musharraf's allies ousted from power.
Army officials said that Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig, the army's surgeon general, was the highest ranking Pakistani officer to be killed in an attack since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"This was the first suicide attack in Pakistan in which a high-ranking military official has been killed since 9/11 and also the first attack after the election," chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said.
The army said the general, his driver and guard were "martyred" along with five civilians, while 25 people were wounded.
Pakistan has been hit by a wave of violence blamed on Islamist rebels which intensified last year and was key in fomenting resentment against Musharraf, who many Pakistanis blamed for failing to curb the bloodshed.
Taliban militants said Sunday they were ready for peace talks with Pakistan's new government, but only if it rejects Musharraf's military campaign against them in the country's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
Later Monday, at least three Pakistani soldiers were killed and four wounded in a bomb in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, which has been hit by a tribal insurgency, officials said.
And in the troubled northwest, four Pakistanis were killed when unidentified gunmen stormed the offices of British charity Plan International, an official from the organisation told AFP.
Pakistan has been on edge since the December 27 assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi.
Her party won the most seats in the polls, but Musharraf's spokesman on Monday dismissed fresh pressure at home and abroad for the embattled leader to step down after the defeat of his allies.
A US senator who monitored the polls one week ago said Musharraf should be given a "graceful way to move", while arch-foe and former premier Nawaz Sharif said the sooner the president stepped down, the better.
"Except for Nawaz Sharif it is clear that no one else is talking about the president leaving," Musharraf's spokesman, Major General Rashid Qureshi, told Dawn News Television.
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N formed a coalition with Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party last week.
They are seeking further allies to get them the two-thirds majority in parliament with which they could theoretically impeach the president.
"Musharraf should quit as soon as possible. It would be better for him because the people have given their mandate," Sharif said after meeting a hardline Islamist party leader.
In Washington, Joe Biden, one of three US senators who observed the elections, discussed Musharraf's options in a television interview.
Asked on ABC television if he thought it would be good for Musharraf to prepare an exit strategy to avoid being forced out by a hostile parliament, Biden said: "Probably".
Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper cited an anonymous aide as saying that Musharraf was readying such a strategy after Bhutto and Sharif's parties won the elections.
"I firmly believe if they (political parties) do not focus on old grudges -- and there's plenty in Pakistan -- and give him a graceful way to move," then Musharraf would leave office, Biden added.
Musharraf's spokesman rejected Biden's comments and said the president was ready to work with the new government.
"The president has been elected for a period of five years by the assemblies of Pakistan, which have been elected by the Pakistani people and not by senators from the US," he added.
"So I don't think he needs to respond to anything that is said by these people in their capacity."