Suicide bomber hits in Pakistan

Islamabad – A suicide bomber killed three children and three soldiers in an attack on a military vehicle in Pakistan’s restive northwestern region bordering Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.

The mountainous frontier separating Pakistan and Afghanistan has long been a hive of militant activity, with fighters using the porous border to escape state security forces. On Saturday evening a suicide bomber detonated in a small market near Miran Shah in North Waziristan, just 26km southeast of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s army said three children aged between four and 11 were killed in the “suicide blast”, alongside three soldiers in the heavily militarised area.

“The bomber came by foot and blew himself up when a vehicle of security forces passed by,” a local government official said on condition of anonymity.

Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said “murderers of innocent children are enemies of humanity and Islam”. “We will not sit in peace until we hunt down these barbarians.”

The attack has not yet been claimed. The Pakistani Taliban has a long history of plotting strikes in the region and is responsible for some of the bloodiest chapters of recent Pakistani history. But after a massacre of nearly 150 schoolchildren in Peshawar, a 2014 military offensive crushed the movement and drove its remaining members into Afghanistan.