News / Pakistan

Roadside bomb attack kills seven in northwestern Pakistan

Monday, 18 July 2016 5:47 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 18 July 2016 5:47 PM ]

Pakistani police officials inspect the site of a roadside bomb explosion in northwestern city of Peshawar on May 18, 2016. (AFP photo)

At least seven people have lost their lives in a roadside bomb explosion that struck their vehicle in Pakistan's restive northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, local security officials say.

According to district police officer, Athar Waheed, the casualties were caused after an improvised explosive device (IED) planted along a roadside ripped through their vehicle in the northwestern town of Upper Dir on Monday evening.

Sources say the occupants of the vehicle included tribal elders and elected representatives of the local government who had visited the area to resolve a dispute between two rival groups.

Meanwhile, Yar Muhammad, a local police official, said that a pro-government elder had been the prime target of the attack in the volatile region.

"The bomb in fact targeted Malik Mutabar Khan, the pro-government elder and peace committee head, who was not present in the car at the time of the explosion," Muhammad said, adding, "It was just by chance that Malik Mutabar Khan got out of the vehicle at a nearby place before the explosion."

No individual or group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far, but Pakistani officials usually blame the Taliban militant group for such incidents.

Pro-Taliban militants have often targeted pro-government tribal elders in the violence-wracked northwestern province.

In the country’s troubled northwestern tribal regions, Islamabad has been engaged in a major offensive against militant hideouts since June 2014, when a deadly raid on the Karachi International Airport ended the government’s faltering peace talks with the pro-Taliban militants.

Pakistan’s army has intensified military operations against the militants since pro-Taliban elements killed over 150 people, most of them children, in an armed assault on a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in December 2014.

Thousands of people have been killed over the past decade as a result of a surge in violence in the country. Thousands more have been displaced by the wave of violence and militancy.

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