Bomb kills 9, wounds 20 in NW Pakistan

[February 02, 2011]  PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- A car bomb killed nine people close to the main northwestern city of Peshawar on Wednesday, the latest in a rash of attacks that are challenging recent police claims of progress against Islamist militants in the region.

Twenty others were wounded in the blast on a main road leading to Pakistan's border area with Afghanistan, said government official Siraj Ahmed Khan. Three children were among the dead.

The possible target of the bombing was not immediately clear. It was the third major bombing in or near the city in the last week.

Government and security force targets in Peshawar have been often attacked by the Pakistani Taliban, who have bases close to the frontier with Afghanistan. Pakistani security forces have traditionally had very little presence or authority in the tribally ruled region.

In December, city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan pointed to a drop in attacks in 2010 as evidence authorities had "broken the back" of the insurgency in the city. He said the improvement was because of offensive police and army actions close to the border area and more police patrols and checkpoints in the city.

Also in the northwest, a group of militants on Wednesday attacked a security post in the Anarggi area of Mohmand tribal region, killing three paramilitary soldiers and wounding four. The troops returned fire and killed 16 insurgents, said Javed Khan, a government administrator.

In the nearby Orakzai tribal region, fighter jets pounded suspected militant hideouts, killing 15 alleged militants and wounding 10 others, said local government administrator Aurangzeb Khan.

Both Mohmand and Orakzai have seen anti-militant offensives by the Pakistani army over the past three years, but the militants have proven a tough enemy.

Elsewhere in the tribal area, several mortars fired from Afghanistan landed near an army checkpoint in the Ghulam Khan area of North Waziristan on Wednesday, killing one Pakistani soldier and wounding three others, said Pakistani intelligence officials.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The attack sparked an intense gunbattle that began around noon and was still ongoing an hour and a half later, they said.

Another set of Pakistani intelligence officials said the attack came from an Afghan security post across the border. They spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reasons.

Gen. Abdul Hakim Isaqzai, provincial chief of police in Afghanistan's Khost province, confirmed that clashes have taken place along the border involving local Afghan police using small arms. He could not confirm the use of mortars.

The fighting followed a decision by Afghan police to set up a security checkpoint on their side of the border about 10 days ago, he said. Isaqzai blamed the Pakistanis for starting the clashes.

No casualties have been reported on the Afghan side.

Also Wednesday, police said gunmen killed four policemen and kidnapped four others, including a senior local official, in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province.

The incidents occurred several hours apart late Tuesday night in Bolan district, said police official Khamisa Khan. The dead included a local police chief, and the official who was kidnapped along with four of his guards was Shaukat Ali, deputy commissioner of Jal Magsi district, he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Nationalist groups have waged a low-level insurgency in Baluchistan for decades to pressure the federal government for more autonomy and a greater share of the province's natural resources.

[Associated Press; By RIAZ KHAN]

Associated Press writers Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan, and Amir Shah in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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