Two Pakistani soldiers killed in blast in northwest

TANK, Pakistan, May 26 (Reuters) A roadside bomb killed two Pakistani soldiers and wounded five today in an attack on a military convoy near a northwestern town where Islamist militants have been active, police and hospital officials said.

The convoy was travelling to the troubled South Waziristan tribal region when struck, four km from Tank town, the officials said.

''It was a remote-controlled bomb and exploded when the convoy of about 45 military vehicles was passing,'' said Muhammad Idrees Khan, a police official in the town in North West Frontier Province.

Later, a suspected militant was killed when a grenade he was trying to throw at a police patrol on the same road went off in his hands, police said.

Security forces and militants have battled intermittently in Tank this year, evidence, some analysts say, of ''Talibanisation'', or the spread of militant influence from remote tribal regions on the Afghan border to more developed, populous areas.

At least five people were killed and 12 wounded in clashes last week in the town, 290 km southwest of Islamabad.

In March, militants and police battled in the town for two days after militants barged into a boys school and tried to recruit children for holy war.

Pakistan, an important US ally, has been trying to clear militants out of northwestern areas on the Afghan border.

Beginning in 2003, security forces launched a series of offensives against al Qaeda-linked militants in tribal lands on the border.

Hundreds of Pakistani troops have been killed while many militants have been killed in attacks on their camps.

REUTERS KN HS1257