Six killed in suicide attack on Pak army convoy

ISLAMABAD: At least six soldiers were killed and four others injured on Wednesday in a suicide attack on an army convoy in Pakistan's restive tribal region, which officials suspect could be a fallout of the crackdown on Lal Masjid clerics and their students here.

Defence spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told newsmen here that a suicide bomber attacked the army convoy going from Mir Ali in North Waziristan to Bannu, a major city near the tribal region.

Four army personnel were killed on the spot while two seriously injured later died in hospital. Four other soldiers were also injured in the attack, he said.

The spokesman said no group claimed responsibility for the attack but "we are investigating as to who carried it out."

He, however, did not rule out the possibility of any links to the government crackdown on the Lal Masjid clerics and their militant students.

Minister for State for Information, Tariq Azim, told the media here that the Lal Masjid clerics, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, have been in contact with some militant leaders in tribal areas to carry out attacks to protest the crackdown on their mosque and madrassas in Islamabad.

He said their monitored phone calls revealed that they wanted such attacks to take place.

Most of the 7,000 odd students studying in the two madrassas belong to poor families and hail from remote areas of North West Frontier Province (NWFP).