Agence France-Presse,
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan: A roadside bomb killed 14 bus passengers in Pakistan's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan Wednesday, while two troops and ten Islamic militants died in a clash nearby, officials said.
The incidents both happened in North Waziristan where US officials allege that Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network and its pro-Taliban allies have regrouped to launch attacks in the region and in the West.
Pakistan has been rocked by a string of deadly militant attacks, many of them targeting security forces, since troops staged a bloody raid on the Al-Qaeda-linked Red Mosque in Islamabad in July.
The blast happened on a road that frequently used by Pakistani military convoys near Mir Ali, the second biggest town in North Waziristan, security officials said.
“The bus hit an explosive device planted on the road by militants, destroying it completely. Fourteen people died on the spot and five injured were taken to hospital,” one official told AFP.
It was the second deadly bombing in Pakistan this week, after a suicide bomber disguised in a woman's burqa killed 16 people on Monday in the garrison town of Bannu, which itself borders on North Waziristan.
The blast targeting the bus happened hours after pro-Taliban militants raided a security checkpost near Mir Ali in a pre-dawn assault, killing two soldiers and wounding another four, the military said.
“Ten miscreants were killed in the resulting clash,” chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told AFP.
Security officials in the region said earlier that troops responded with artillery fire after the militants attacked them with rockets.
The US military said on Tuesday that Al-Qaeda was re-emerging in the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan frontier despite the presence of around 90,000 Pakistani troops.
A peace deal signed between the Pakistani government and militants in September 2006 in North Waziristan — one of seven semi-autonomous tribal zones — broke down in July after the Red Mosque was raided.
More than 300 people have died in attacks apparently sparked by the collapse of the pact and by the siege and storming of the Red Mosque at around the same time.
At least 100 people were killed in the mosque raid.
The mosque reopened earlier Wednesday on the orders of Pakistan's Supreme Court.
Around 5,000 people packed the mosque in central Islamabad to hear a recorded message by its chief cleric Abdul Aziz, who was captured while trying to flee the building dressed in a burqa.
“Our movement for enforcement of Sharia has been stained with our blood and it must continue,” Aziz said in the message. “The problems of this country can only be overcome with Islamic law.”
