Six Pakistani policemen killed in bomb blast

A roadside bomb targeting a police van killed six police officers and one civilian in the northwestern Pakistani city of Kohat late Saturday, police said. “The bomb was planted in a drain, it was detonated by a remote-controlled device. The target was a police van,” local police chief Mubarak Zeb said on a deadly day in the northwest, after an earlier blast killed 29 people. “A police van was on a routine patrol in the city. Six police officials in the van were killed. The vehicle was badly damaged,” said another police official, Safazle Naeem. A passerby also died in the blast, he added. “It was a terrorist act,” Naeem said, blaming Pakistani militants for the attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamist militants have carried out several attacks in the area. Meanwhile, tribesmen in Pakistan’s troubled northwest mourned yesterday as the death toll from a bomb attack climbed to 29 after four blast victims died overnight in hospitals, officials said. Private markets and all bazaars remained closed as local tribesmen held funerals to bury the dead in different parts of Khyber tribal district along the Afghan border, witnesses said. “Four more critically injured died in hospitals overnight. The whole town is closed to mourn the deaths,” Raseed Khan, a local government official, said. A car bomb ripped through a market area in the main bazaar of Landi Kotal in Khyber tribal district on Saturday, initially killing 25 people including three children, officials said, adding that more than 50 people were injured. Prayers were held for the dead late Saturday and Sunday, with tribal police and paramilitary providing tight security, local officials and witnesses said. In the last five years attacks blamed on Islamist bombers have killed more than 5,000 people in Pakistan according to an AFP tally. US officials consider the country’s semi-autonomous tribal belt a safe haven for Al Qaeda and insurgents fighting both in Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan.