MIRANSHAH, 2 December 2005 — Five suspected militants, three of them foreigners, died when bomb-making equipment detonated at their house in a Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border, officials said yesterday.

But residents launched protests, saying that two of the dead were children and that the army had fired missiles at the building in Haisori village in the restive North Waziristan region.

Local administration official Kamal Khattak told AFP that five people including three foreigners were killed “when explosives stored in their house went off.”

Authorities were trying to establish the nationalities of the three, he said, while villagers said they included three Uzbeks who had rented two rooms in a compound owned by a local tribesmen.

Pakistan army had deployed few brigades in this area to check and eliminate militants who frequently cross the border.

Most of these foreigners had sneaked into Pakistan side of the tribal areas during previous Afghan war later they forged links with Taleban government few were linked with Al-Qaeda

The residents said they heard seven loud blasts between midnight and 2:00 a.m. (1900 and 2100 GMT) and an aircraft also hovered over the area, although military officials said that there was no air operation at that time.

Several hundred tribesmen and students of a local college gathered at the nearby village of Mir Ali for the funerals of two boys whom they said were killed in the explosion.

As the the bodies of Muhammad Aziz, 7, and student Abdul Wasid, 17, were buried, students from the older boy’s college chanted slogans against the government and demanded an end to military operations in the area.

The crowd chanted “Stop the operation” and “Stop firing at children.”

Thirty-five tribal militants with alleged links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network signed a peace deal with Pakistani authorities on Monday, pledging not to harbor foreign militants.

In another development, the Afghan Border Security forces kidnapped a functionary of the Pakistan government at Bab-Dosti ,Chaman,border town between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was released later.

Soon after the incident the Border Security chiefs of the two countries closed the border and the security forces put on high alert.

— With input from agencies