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Attacks test Pakistan ceasefire | |
(about 5 hours later) | |
At least four people have been killed in a suspected suicide attack in north-west Pakistan, amid signs a truce with militants may be breaking down. | |
The blast in the town of Bannu would be the first suicide attack since March when Pakistan's new government indicated it would talk with militants. | |
In another attack in the north-west gunmen shot dead two policemen outside a bank in the Swat valley, police said. | |
Last week top militant Baitullah Mehsud suspended talks with the authorities. | |
Pakistan's government must bring the frontier area under its control as quickly as possible John Negroponte, US Deputy Secretary of State | |
Mehsud, who called a truce on 24 April, said discussions were on hold because of the government's reluctance to pull out troops from tribal areas. | |
Attempts in recent years to defeat pro-Taleban forces operating across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border have failed. | |
Patrol ambushed | |
Over the past year Pakistan's north-west has seen dozens of suicide attacks, blamed on Islamist militants. | |
Bannu saw a number of attacks last year | |
No group has accepted responsibility for the latest blast in Bannu, but militants loyal to Mehsud claim to have carried out similar attacks in the past. | |
Police say the bomber, who was travelling in a rickshaw, blew himself up near a security checkpoint in the garrison town in North-West Frontier Province. | |
The rickshaw driver was killed, as were another civilian and a policeman, the authorities said. Four others were wounded. | |
The bombing comes a day after a security patrol in Baitullah Mehsud's native South Waziristan tribal district came under fire from suspected Taleban fighters. One soldier was injured in the attack. | |
Mehsud is accused of being behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December, which he denies. | |
Although his stronghold is in South Waziristan, his influence extends across territory near the Afghan border. | |
Dialogue | |
Pakistan's new government has said it will deal with Islamic militancy through dialogue and development. | |
Last month the authorities set free Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the founder of an outlawed Islamist group that has fought in Pakistan and Afghanistan. | |
He was released under an agreement to renounce violence and help restore peace in the north-west valley of Swat. | |
The valley was a prominent destination for tourists until the cleric led a Taleban-style insurgency last year. | |
On Tuesday, a group of armed militants opened fire outside a branch of the Habib Bank in Matta Tehsil in Swat district, the official news agency, the Associated Press of Pakistan, reported. Two policemen on guard were killed. | |
American officials cautiously support the new government's efforts to reach peace through talks. | |
But they admit they are concerned and say there is a problem enforcing such agreements. | |
On Monday US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte urged Pakistan's new government to act "as quickly as possible". | |
"We will not be satisfied until all the violent extremism emanating from the [tribal belt] is brought under control," he said. |