BC-PAKISTAN/ (WRAPUP 2, PIX, TV)

WRAPUP 2-Militants attack Pakistan spy agency office, 7 dead

Supreme Court resumes crucial amnesty case

Militants attack security agency office, at least 7 killed

Stocks end lower after attack

Thousands in Karachi rally against violence

By Asim Tanveer

MULTAN, Pakistan, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Militants armed with grenades and a car bomb killed at least seven people in an assault on an office of Pakistan's main security agency on Tuesday, officials said, the third major attack in two days.

The attack in the eastern city of Multan underscored the relentless security troubles facing the nuclear-armed U.S. ally, whose help is vital in efforts to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan in the face of a growing insurgency.

The violence also coincides with rising political tension, with the Supreme Court hearing challenges to an amnesty order that could heap pressure on embattled President Asif Ali Zardari.

Doubts are growing that Zardari can survive politically in the long term, let alone lead the fight against al Qaeda-linked militants who have demonstrated time and again they can penetrate security outside key buildings.

Top Multan city official Mohammad Ali Gardezi said the body parts of two suspected suicide bombers were strewn over a road outside the office of the military's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

"Our security agencies were on alert and they didn't let the attackers reach their target," Gardezi told reporters, adding 47 people had been wounded as well as the seven killed.

Between two and four attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a checkpost outside the ISI office, then threw hand grenades and set off their car bomb, police said. The fronts of several homes near the checkpost were destroyed.

Pakistan's military, once a staunch supporter of Afghan militants in their fight against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, now faces brazen Taliban insurgents on its own soil.

Northwestern Peshawar has suffered the most from retaliatory bombings that have killed hundreds of people since October, when the army launched an offensive in South Waziristan on the Afghan border, part of a region seen as a global militant hub.

Two bombs also went off in a busy market in eastern Lahore late on Monday, killing 49 people and wounding more than 100.

The attack in Multan will compound fears that the militants are pushing their campaign out of the northwest.

Stock market investors were rattled by the prospect of wider bloodshed. The main index ended 1.66 percent down at 8,843.96, dealers said.

U.S. PRESSURE

Many of the militant attacks have targeted security forces, including the army headquarters in the key city of Rawalpindi.

A suicide car-bomber killed 10 people in an attack on an ISI office in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Nov. 13.

In the southern commercial hub of Karachi, several thousand supporters of the city's dominant political party rallied to protest against militant violence.

Pakistan's priority is defeating the Taliban at home, but the task has been complicated by U.S. pressure to root out fighters who cross the border to Afghanistan to attack U.S. troops.

U.S. President Barack Obama sent a clear message to Pakistan last week in his speech outlining plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Pakistan, he said, must not allow its territory to be used as a sanctuary for militants.

Early on Tuesday, a U.S. pilotless drone aircraft fired two missiles into a northwestern al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary on the Afghan border, killing at least three militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The United States has carried out 47 drone strikes this year, compared with 32 last year.

Despite Pakistani objections, the White House has authorised the expansion of the CIA's drone programme in Pakistan to complement Obama's plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the New York Times newspaper reported this month.

In Islamabad, the Supreme Court continued a hearing into challenges to an amnesty decree which, if struck down, could spark a political crisis for Zardari.

The amnesty was introduced by former president Pervez Musharraf under a plan to bring Zardari's wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, back from self-imposed exile under a power-sharing pact.

Bhutto returned in October 2007 but was assassinated just weeks later.

Zardari cannot be prosecuted whatever the outcome of the case because of presidential immunity.

But criminal cases could be reopened against government officials, including the interior and defence ministers, if the court strikes down the decree. (Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider, Kamran Haider; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Paul Tait)

REUTERS