Militants kill 34 Pakistani forces in border region

In the deadliest suicide attack in many months in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands, a car bomber struck a military convoy Saturday, killing 24 troops and injuring nearly 30 others, authorities said.

At least 10 more security forces were killed today in a confrontation in the mountainous frontier region of Swat, police and military officials said. A gun battle broke out after a military convoy was hit by an explosion, either from a suicide attack or a roadside bomb, the officials said.

The Swat River Valley, northeast of Peshawar, is considered the stronghold of a radical mullah, Maulana Fazlullah, and last week was the scene of a suicide bombing that killed three police officers. The attacks could presage a broader war by Islamist militants against government forces, triggered by the siege of a radical mosque last week by elite Pakistani commandos in the capital, Islamabad, which left scores dead.

On the orders of President Pervez Musharraf, who is also the chief of the military, thousands of troops have been deployed in the volatile border region in recent days. Radical groups have vowed to avenge the government’s storming of the Red Mosque and the killing of one of two brothers who presided over the complex.

Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war in neighboring Afghanistan, said Thursday that Islamist militants would be pursued in “every corner” of Pakistan after the Red Mosque confrontation.

But Pakistan’s military intelligence agencies have been accused of maintaining close ties with Islamist militant groups despite Musharraf’s alliance with the United States. Recent U.S. intelligence assessments say the threat from a resurgent Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s border regions is at its highest levels since just before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The attack against Pakistani troops in North Waziristan coincided with violence elsewhere in the border region Saturday. Authorities said that in the heart of Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, they found two antitank mines attached to a timing device in a car parked near a bank affiliated with Pakistan’s military.

In another attack in the border areas, a vehicle carrying troops was hit by a bomb in the town of Bannu, but there were no fatalities.

The suicide attack took place in the village of Daznaray, about 20 miles north of Miram Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said all those killed when a driver rammed the explosives-packed car into the convoy were army troops, and that the wounded included five members of paramilitary forces. Helicopters transported the wounded to hospitals.

In November, 42 army recruits were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a recruitment center in the border region of Malakand.

Taliban commanders have set a deadline of today for troops to remove recently established checkpoints in North Waziristan, the scene of a controversial pact last year under which troops were to remain in their barracks and Taliban-linked fighters were to refrain from cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

The accord, signed in September by the government and tribal elders, is widely viewed as a failure. Cross-border attacks became frequent.

Many people living in and near Miram Shah were fleeing in fear of a major confrontation between Pakistani troops and militants, witnesses said.

Arshad, the military spokesman, acknowledged that the suicide attack could have been in response to the raid on the Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, which had been a prominent symbol of Islamist militants’ opposition to the Musharraf government.

Troops surrounded the mosque July 3 and stormed it a week later.

Radical clerics had dispatched male and female students from its madrasas, or Islamic seminaries, on a vigilante-style campaign in the capital in which video stores and alleged brothels were raided.

king@latimes.com

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Special correspondent Ali reported from Miram Shah and Times staff writer King from Istanbul, Turkey.