Roadside bomb kills doctor in Pakistani tribal region

KHAR, Pakistan, Feb 16 (Reuters) A roadside bomb killed a doctor and wounded three people today in a Pakistani tribal region regarded as a hotbed of support for the Taliban, officials said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Bajaur, the most northerly region in Pakistan's tribal belt and bordering Afghanistan.

''It was a remote-controlled bomb,'' said an intelligence official in Khar, Bajaur's main town.

Militants linked to al Qaeda, the Taliban and their Islamist allies have been blamed for such incidents in the past.

The doctor was killed when his car was struck by the bomb while returning to Khar, after attending a tribal gathering to promote a polio vaccination campaign.

Bajaur and South and North Waziristan, the two regions that lie at the southern end of the tribal belt, pose the greatest security threat among Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Numerous government officials and pro-government tribal elders have been killed in these areas since security forces launched a hunt for militants in late 2003 as part of Pakistan's efforts in the US-led war on terrorism.

Pakistani and Afghan health officials last December launched a drive to eradicate polio from their rugged border areas.

However, health officials in Pakistan said thousands of people in the tribal areas and adjoining North West Frontier Province (NWFP) were opposing the campaign.

Waheed Khan, a government coordinator for the anti-polio drive in NWFP, said parents of around 24,000 children had refused to let their children be vaccinated, partly because of rumours that it was a conspiracy to sterilise them.

He said the government was engaging religious clerics to persuade parents to give vaccine to their children.

REUTERS PDM RK1915