Pakistan awash in bloody violence

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Violence flared in Pakistan Tuesday, with the assassination of a regional governor in Islamabad and bombing of a school bus in Turbat, police said.

Early indications were that Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer was shot while riding in his motorcade through a market district, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported. There were unconfirmed reports the shooter was one Taseer's bodyguards, the report said.

In the southwestern city of Turbat, a bomb blast hit a school bus near a girls' school, injuring five children, one of them critically, the APP said. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, police said.

The violence came a day after Karachi was rocked with five apparently politically motivated killings, the PakTribune reported. Following one of the shootings of a local politician, angry crowds took to the streets and set fire to two buses, a rickshaw and a hotel, the report said.

To the northeast, militants used a remote-control device to detonate a bomb in Peshawar that destroyed a NATO oil supply tanker truck on the Pakistan-Afghanistan highway, APP said. No injuries were reported in the attack.