Two bombers kill four people and injure many more on campus of International Islamic University, on outskirts of Pakistani capital

Two suicide bombers have killed four people and injured 18 others at a university in Islamabad, the Pakistani interior ministry said today.

The attackers detonated explosives almost simultaneously at around 3pm local time on the campus of the International Islamic University, on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital. They A string of attacks by the Taliban has shocked the country in the past two weeks. No one has yet claimed responsibility for today's blasts, but the university's president, Dr Anwar Hussain Siddiqui, pointed the finger at the door of the Taliban, currently the target of a huge army operation in the lawless region of South Waziristan, on the Afghan border.

"It seems that [militant] sympathisers or collaborators are doing this to divert attention from the military operation," Siddiqui said. "They are trying to create panic in the capital city."

The interior minister, Rehman Malik, said whether or not there had been a claim of responsibility, "all roads lead to South Waziristan".

"We are in a state of war," he said. "They will make every effort to destabilise the country. These so-called Islamists are enemies of Islam and enemies of Pakistan."

The attackers struck in a women's cafeteria and at the Islamic law department. Witnesses told Dawn News there were between 3,000 and 4,000 students on the campus at the time. Television footage showed a woman with a bloodied left leg being carried on a stretcher, and a redbrick building with shattered windows.

Geo News reported that one female student was among the dead . It said a suspect had been arrested near the campus.

The university has more than 18,000 students, nearly half of whom are women. Many of the students come from abroad, including around 700 from China. It is a seat of Islamic learning, but most of the students take secular subjects such as management science or computer studies, Siddiqui said.

Foreign students were among the injured, according to Dawn News. Zulkifli, a student from Indonesia attending the university, said he had seen two bodies being taken from a building on the campus.

Security at educational establishments had been tightened in response to the recent campaign of violence by militants who want to overthrow the state. Many schools and universities had closed in the wake of the threat posed by the Taliban.

Pakistani forces launched an offensive on Saturday to drive out the Taliban from their bases in the lawless region of South Waziristan. In the run-up to the offensive, militants attacked a police station in Peshawar, a United Nations office, the army headquarters in Rawalpindi and three different police facilities in Lahore on the same day.