ISLAMABAD: A bomb planted on a bicycle exploded near a women’s hostel in the northwestern Pakistani town of Dera Ismail Khan yesterday, killing five people and wounding several, police said. “It was a cycle bomb.

Five people died on the spot while the wounded were shifted to hospitals,” police officer Bashir Khan said by telephone from the scene.

Khan declined to say if the women’s hostel was the target. A hospital and a press club are also in the vicinity. Dera Ismail Khan is 270 km southwest of the capital, Islamabad, in North-West Frontier Province.

It is near the border with the South Waziristan ethnic Pashtun tribal region, a known sanctuary for Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Afghan border. Militants have unleashed a wave of suicide and bomb attacks and assassinations in response to military operations against them in the northwest, including the Swat Valley where insurgents are waging a violent campaign to enforce strict Islamic law.

A man and a woman were killed yesterday when a mortar bomb fired by security forces at a militant hide-out hit a house near Swat’s main town of Mingora, residents and police said.

Pakistan’s military is battling extremists loyal to radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah who have launched a violent campaign to introduce Islamic Shariah law.

The authorities placed several towns under indefinite curfew late Sunday and issued a warning that “anybody violating the curfew will be shot at sight.”

The move came after Fazlullah, in a speech over his FM radio station, released the names of 43 people including ministers, MPs and local government officials and ordered them to appear before a Taleban “court.”

Troops shot dead a civilian for violating the curfew in Chaharbagh town, a police official said. Three others, including a woman, were killed when security forces pounded suspected militant hideouts in the same area, the official said, requesting anonymity.

“Troops launched an operation against miscreants in Chaharbagh and Manglore areas and (are) targeting their hide-outs with artillery, mortars and small arms,” Maj. Nasir Khan said.

In his radio speech, Fazlullah said: “These people encouraged military operations in the area and are responsible for the killings of Taleban and civilians,” adding that they would be tried in Taleban courts.

Authorities downplayed the threat. “The government will not bow before these miscreants,” provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told AFP.

Eight militants were killed in a clash in the valley on Sunday, the military said, while early yesterday militants blew up a government high school, district officials said. Schools are closed for a winter break and no one was hurt.

Militants have destroyed more than 180 valley schools, most of them for girls. The militants are opposed to girls getting an education and see schools as symbols of government authority. They also say the army has been posting soldiers in schools.

Separately, militants from a Sunni Muslim militant group shot dead a political leader in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, triggering violent protests by his supporters.

Hussain Ali Yousafzai, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party and a Shiite Muslim, was attacked and killed by two men on a motorcycle. Hazaras are Shiite Muslims originally from central Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group telephoned newspaper offices to claim responsibility.

The killing enraged party activists who took to the streets and torched several vehicles and damaged government buildings and banks. A city hospital said six people were injured.

— With input from agencies