ISLAMABAD, 27 May 2007 — A roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy in troubled northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least two soldiers and wounding seven others, officials said.
The convoy was traveling to the troubled South Waziristan tribal region when struck, four km from Tank town, the officials said.
“It was a remote-controlled bomb and exploded when the convoy of about 45 military vehicles was passing,” said Muhammad Idrees Khan, an official in the town in North West Frontier Province.
Later, a suspected militant was killed when a grenade he was trying to throw at a police patrol on the same road went off in his hands, police said.
Security forces and militants have battled intermittently in Tank this year, evidence, some analysts say, of “Talebanization,” or the spread of militant influence from remote tribal regions on the Afghan border to more developed, populous areas.
At least five people were killed and 12 wounded in clashes last week in the town, 290 km southwest of Islamabad.
Meanwhile, suspected militants have abducted two government officials in the North West Frontier Province, authorities said yesterday.
“Unknown gunmen stopped the car of two health officials in Tagori area of Lucky Marwat district as they were on their way to the office and kidnapped them,” a police officer Asmatullah Khan said.
No one has accepted responsibility of the kidnapping of Dr. Mohammed Ishaq and Dr. Abdul Rehman, but Khan believed that the captors were Islamic militants from the nearby tribal agency of North Waziristan bordering Afghanistan.
Militants last week held nine government officials including three women in the same tribal region, which were released five days later.
In March, militants and police battled in the town for two days after militants barged into a boys school and tried to recruit children for holy war.
Pakistan, an important US ally, has been trying to clear militants out of northwestern areas on the Afghan border.
