ISLAMABAD, 4 June 2006 — A bomb exploded as Pakistani police were investigating it in a trouble-plagued region on the border with Afghanistan, killing one policeman and wounding three, a government official said yesterday.
Violence in the Bajaur tribal region has intensified this year since a US air strike on a suspected militant gathering in January killed more than 20 people, most of them civilians.
Police were on patrol late on Friday when they spotted something suspicious on a road, said the region’s top government official, political agent Mohammad Fahim Khan Wazir.
A blast set off by remote-control killed the policeman and wounded three colleagues as they approached to investigate, he said. Seven people were detained for questioning. “So far we only know that the policemen were on a routine patrol when the bomb went off, but we don’t have any further details,” the official said.
Pakistani forces have been trying to root out militants who fled to the lawless border region after US and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taleban in Afghanistan in 2001.
Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes, bomb attacks and ambushes on security forces. As well as the militants on the Afghan border, Pakistani forces are also battling autonomy-seeking rebels in the province of Balochistan, also on the Afghan border, hundreds of kilometers to the southwest.
Militants in Balochistan, who security officials say have no links to the militants elsewhere on the border, blew up two gas pipelines yesterday, police said.
