Eight Pakistani soldiers killed in suicide blast

ISLAMABAD, July 14 (Reuters) A suicide car-bomber killed eight Pakistani paramilitary soldiers and wounded 20 today in an attack that might have been linked to an army assault on a radical mosque in the capital, a military spokesman said.

The attacker rammed his car into a paramilitary convoy in the North Waziristan attack on the Afghan border, 20 km (12 miles) southeast of the region's main town of Miranshah.

It was the second attack on security forces in northwestern Pakistan today. Two security officials were wounded in an earlier blast near the town of Bannu in North West Frontier Province.

The attacks followed the storming of a radical mosque in Islamabad on Tuesday in which 75 supporters of radical clerics, including militant gunmen, were killed.

''The convoy was on patrol when the attack took place,'' military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad said of the North Waziristan blast.

Nearly 40 people have been killed in bomb attacks targeting security forces in the northwest since July 3, when security forces in Islamabad surrounded the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex, following clashes with gunmen based there.

Asked if the North Waziristan blast was linked to the mosque assault, Arshad said: ''It could be.'' Last Sunday, three Chinese workers were shot dead in the northwestern city of Peshawar in an attack police said appeared to be linked to the Lal Masjid.

Protesters angry about the assault on the mosque have ransacked offices and looted supplies of Western aid agencies in different parts of North West Frontier Province.

The army said 75 people had been killed in the assault on the Lal Masjid mosque-religious school complex.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao said yesterday 60-65 of the dead were militants and four or five of them were foreigners, but did not say from where.

North Waziristan is a hotbed of al Qaeda and Taliban support, from where Taliban launch raids into Afghanistan, US military officers in Afghanistan say.

US security officials also say al Qaeda members plot violence from sanctuaries in North Waziristan and other lawless regions on the Pakistani side of the border.

The Pakistani government struck a deal with tribal elders in North Waziristan last September aimed at isolating foreign militants. Attacks on Pakistani security forces have been relatively rare since then.

REUTERS CS RN1447