Ten people were also were wounded when a bomb ripped through a restaurant at a market in the troubled Bajour tribal region, near the Afghan border, officials said.

A government administrator, Shad Khan, said a man on foot carried out the suicide attack. The Pakistani Taleban claimed responsibility. Earlier the officials had said a timed bomb exploded. “Initially it looked like a bomb blast, but later investigators found out that it was a suicide bombing and the body of the attacker was also found,” local government official Saad Mohammad said.

The attack came a day after Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a seven-hour trip to Pakistan in a bid to repair ties damaged by the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, which Pakistanis say was an attack on its sovereignty.

On Saturday, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tahmina Janjua said Clinton’s visit had helped clear up misunderstandings and that the two sides would cooperate on raids against terror suspects.

Clinton referred Friday to joint operations coming soon, and US officials said the US and Pakistan agreed to take some specific measures together.

In one sign of a slight warming trend, CIA and Pakistani intelligence officials completed a joint search of the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad Friday, a Pakistani official said.

Saturday’s attack, in the village of Salarzai, underscored the militants’ ability to strike at the tribesmen, who have often sided with government troops in efforts to rout insurgents.

Pakistani Taleban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ahsan, claimed responsibility, saying the elders were targeted because they were helping the security forces.

Bajour is considered a militant stronghold and violence has persisted there since last year, when the military claimed that it had defeated Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants after more than a year of fighting.

The United States considers the area the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on earth. On Thursday, a Pakistani Taleban suicide bomber detonated a pickup truck loaded with explosives near several government offices in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 32 people.

Thursday’s blast was the latest in a series of attacks to hit the country since the Bin Laden raid, including an 18-hour siege of a naval base in Pakistan’s south.

More than 4,400 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taleban and other Islamist extremist networks based in the tribal belt since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007.