Bomb Attacks Kill Seven in Pakistan

Three separate bomb attacks -- two in the capital Islamabad and one in a restive tribal region -- killed six soldiers and one civilian in Pakistan on Saturday, officials said.

The explosions followed three days of intensive Pakistani military airstrikes against Taliban hideouts near the Afghan border, which killed at least 75 people.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts but they come as the government is locked in stop-start peace talks with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who have waged a seven-year insurgency in the country.

The first blast struck an upmarket shopping area close to the centre of Islamabad around 2:00 am (2100 GMT Friday), killing a security guard and wounding another.

"One watchman has died in the hospital, he was very critically wounded and did not survive," police official Chaudhry Hafiz Hussain said.

"The second watchman is getting medical treatment," he added.

Images broadcast on local television showed broken glass and branches strewn across the pavement.

The second explosion came half an hour after the first, in a different part of the city.

They were the first attacks in the capital since a blast tore through a fruit and vegetable market in April, killing at least 22 people.

That was the deadliest bombing in Islamabad since a huge truck bomb at the Marriott Hotel in 2008.

Mohammad Ali, a police official, said Saturday's second blast came from a "low-intensity" device planted in a car.

"No one was hurt," he told reporters.

The third bomb hit a convoy of paramilitary Frontier Corps in a remote village of the troubled Mohmand tribal district 150 kilometres (miles) northwest of Islamabad along the border with Afghanistan.

Six soldiers died and another was injured.

"It was an IED blast. A total of six security personnel embraced Shahadat (Martyrdom)," the official told Agence France Presse, adding that four troops had died immediately and two later in hospital.

Thousands have been killed in militant violence in recent years but attacks on the capital, much of which is heavily guarded, have been rare.

Peace talks between TTP and the government began in February but have made little progress.

A month-long ceasefire between Pakistan and the Taliban expired last month.