2 Pakistani Soldiers Killed as Death Toll in Car Bomb Rises to 15
A bomb ripped through a military vehicle Saturday killing two Pakistani soldiers in a village in the restive northwestern tribal area bordering Afghanistan, a security official said.
The remote-controlled bomb planted on a roadside hit a patrol party leading a convoy of security forces at Boya village, some 20 kilometers west of Miranshah, the main town of troubled North Waziristan tribal district.
"Two soldiers were martyred in the bomb blast," a security official told Agence France Presse.
"The authorities have clamped a curfew on the main Miranshah-Datta Khel road and are carrying out a search operation," said the official.
Also Saturday, the death toll in a car bomb blast in the southwestern city of Quetta rose to 15 as rescuers found seven more bodies in the rubble, police said.
A car bomb exploded in front of the house of the son of a former federal minister, Naseer Mengal, on Friday and officials gave a death toll of eight.
"The death toll is 15 now. Three more bodies were found in the rubble today and rest were dug out overnight," Nazir Ahmad Kurd, a senior police official told AFP.
Some 40 others were wounded and 10 have been released from hospital after treatment, he added.
Investigators defused an eight-kilogram local made bomb and found seven hand grenades from the site, Kurd said.
It was still unclear who had carried out the attack and whether the driver died in the blast as there were yet no witnesses, Hamid Shakil, another senior police official told AFP.
But a spokesman for rebel group Baluchistan Liberation Army Meerak Baluch called reporters in Quetta and claimed that they carried out the "suicide attack to teach a lesson to traitors."
Quetta is the capital of the troubled Baluchistan province which neighbors both Afghanistan and Iran and is gripped by a regional insurgency for self-determination. It is also a flashpoint for Taliban and sectarian violence.
Source: Agence France Presse
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