Pak policeman killed in blast on Afghan border

Khar (Pakistan), Jun 3: A bomb exploded as Pakistani police were investigating it in a trouble-plagued region on the border with Afghanistan, killing one policeman and wounding three, a government official said today.

Violence in the Bajaur tribal region has intensified this year since a U.S. air strike on a suspected militant gathering in January killed more than 20 people, most of them civilians.

Police were on patrol late yesterday when they spotted something suspicious on a road, said the region's top government official, political agent Mohammad Fahim Khan Wazir.

A blast set off by remote-control killed the policeman and wounded three colleagues as they approached to investigate, he said.

Seven people were detained for questioning.

Pakistani forces have been trying to root out Islamist militants who fled to the lawless border region after US and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes, bomb attacks and ambushes on security forces.

As well as the Islamist militants on the Afghan border, Pakistani forces are also battling autonomy-seeking rebels in the province of Baluchistan, also on the Afghan border, hundreds of kilometres to the southwest.

Militants in Baluchistan, who security officials say have no links to the Islamist fighters elsewhere on the border, blew up two gas pipelines today, police said.

Nationalists in Baluchistan province have been demanding greater benefits from gas and other resources for decades. Their low-level insurgency has intensified this year and Pakistan accuses old rival India of meddling.

Militants blew up two 16 inch pipelines supplying gas from the Pir Koh gas field to the town of Sui, where the main production plant for Pakistan's largest gas field is located.

A gas company official said consumer supplies would not be affected as gas from elsewhere would make up for the losses from Pir Koh.

Baluchistan is the largest but poorest of Pakistan's four provinces, even though it holds the country's largest gas and oil reserves.

REUTERS

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