A suicide bomber struck near the naval headquarters in Pakistan's capital Islamabad on Wednesday, police said, killing a navy official in the latest attack in the Taliban-troubled nation. The attacker walked up to a checkpoint at the entrance to the complex and detonated his explosives when challenged by security forces, scattering bits of flesh across a busy road in central Islamabad, police and witnesses said. Islamist insurgents frequently target military installations, with attacks intensifying as Islamabad pursues a fierce military offensive, under Western pressure to do more to eliminate Taliban and Al-Qaeda sanctuaries. 'The bomber was about 17 to 18 years old. He was wearing a suicide jacket. He came to the gate and tried to enter the complex,' Fazeel Asghar, Islamabad's top administration official, told reporters. 'Security officials checked him and one navy police constable, Mohammad Ashraf, asked him to take off his coat. The bomber then blew himself up and the navy constable died in the blast,' he said. Two other navy personnel were critically wounded, he added. Witnesses described the scene in the aftermath of the blast. 'I was in a nearby street when I heard a loud explosion,' said witness Imtiaz Ali. 'When I reached the main Margalla Road there was smoke near the navy complex. I saw three soldiers lying wounded.' Navy officials were seen rushing towards the gate. Two ambulances reached the blast site and shifted the injured to the navy hospital inside the complex. The windows of several cars were shattered in the powerful blast, and police sealed the road and diverted traffic. The attack came a day after a Pakistani provincial lawmaker was killed in a suicide attack in the northwestern Swat valley, and as Taliban insurgents up attacks to avenge a multi-pronged military offensive against them. Islamabad itself was last hit in late October, when twin suicide blasts tore through the International Islamic University, killing up to five people. Military installations are frequent targets, with a brazen raid and hostage siege on the army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi in October hitting the heart of the country's most powerful establishment. Security has drastically deteriorated in Pakistan since Islamabad joined the US- led 'war on terror' and hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants fled into the tribal belt after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Islamabad has this year launched multiple offensives against Taliban militants across its northwest, sparking a wave of retaliatory suicide bombings and attacks that have killed hundreds of people this year. The attack on the naval headquarters came after US President Barack Obama announced he was sending 30,000 more troops into neighbouring Afghanistan to battle an increasingly virulent Taliban insurgency there. Obama also vowed to start a withdrawal of troop in July 2011, and said that US success in Afghanistan was 'inextricably linked' to Pakistan. 'In the past, there have been those in Pakistan who have argued that the struggle against extremism is not their fight, and that Pakistan is better off doing little or seeking accommodation with those who use violence,' he said. 'But in recent years, as innocents have been killed from Karachi to Islamabad, it has become clear that it is the Pakistani people who are the most endangered by extremism. Public opinion has turned,' the president said. 