PESHAWAR, August 05, 2010:  A suicide bomber killed the chief of Pakistan’s Frontier Constabulary and two other people in a brazen attack outside his office in the city of Peshawar on Wednesday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killing and threatened further targeted assassinations, in what could be a new tactic for the country’s most active militant group, often blamed for mass-casualty bomb attacks. The body of what appeared to be a teenage boy lay at the bomb site. His head and legs were severed, an eyewitness said.

At least two vehicles could be seen in flames and a traffic police motorcycle thrown on its side after it had been sent flying across the road. “The suicide attack targeted Sifwat Ghayoor and he has been martyred,” Bashir Bilour, senior minister in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said.

Ghayoor was a highly regarded commander of the Frontier Constabulary, which assists other security force detachments in military operations against Pakistani Taliban militants in the volatile northwest.