Northwest Pakistan bomb attacks kill three, injure 2

Two separate bomb attacks killed three people and wounded two others, including a senior Pakistani army officer, in a restive tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said on Tuesday.

The incidents took place Monday in the Mohmand tribal area, one of the seven such semi-autonomous districts where the military has been battling Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants for over a decade.

"An improvised explosive device (IED) planted along the roadside in Baizai area went off as a vehicle passed by it killing three people: a tribal policeman, a foreman and a tribesman," senior local administration official Waqar Khan told AFP.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the incident, but Khan said authorities were investigating whether the deceased were associated with a local anti-Taliban militia.

Another IED planted on a roadside in the same district meanwhile struck a military vehicle wounding a Lieutenant Colonel and a soldier, Khan said.

Local intelligence officials confirmed the two incidents.

The army has intensified its offensives in the tribal regions since the Taliban's massacre of 153 people, 134 of them children, in a school in Peshawar last December.
Source :AFP