PARACHINAR, Pakistan - Roadside bombs that struck two vehicles in Pakistan's volatile northwest Sunday have killed a former irrigation minister and three others in one of the attacks and two anti-Taliban tribal elders in the other.
The attacks Sunday were the latest targeting public officials and private citizens who are combatting the growing Taliban-led insurgency, part of a wave of retaliatory violence that has killed more than 600 people in the past two-and-a-half months.
A single attack on Friday killed nearly 100 people when a suicide car bomber struck a sports event near a meeting of tribesmen who supervise an anti-Taliban militia near Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area.
The Pakistani army invaded South Waziristan in mid-October in an attempt to neutralize the Pakistani Taliban's main stronghold in the country, but many militants fled the offensive and have been launching attacks elsewhere in the northwest.
The Pakistani government has pledged it will persevere despite the violence but has resisted U.S. calls to expand its offensive to target militants launching cross-border attacks against coalition troops in Afghanistan.
The U.S. has responded by increasing drone missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas, including a suspected attack Sunday in North Waziristan that killed at least five people, according to intelligence officials.
Hours earlier, a roadside bomb struck a vehicle in the Hangu district of North West Frontier Province, killing former Irrigation Minister Ghaniur Rehman, his two guards and his driver, said district police chief Abdur Rasheed. Two police officers accompanying the former minister were wounded in the attack, he said.
Rehman was affiliated with the Pakistan People's Party (Sherpao group) headed by former Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao, who has survived two suicide bomb attacks.
The attack came after a roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying anti-Taliban elders in the Bajur tribal area, killing two and critically wounding four others, said local official Naseeb Shah. The six men were working to set up an anti-Taliban militia in Bajur, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border, said Shah.
The men were on their way to meet local officials in the main town of Khar when the remote-controlled device detonated, Shah said. The blast occurred near Kassai, about 17 miles (28 kilometres) northeast of Khar, he said.
The Pakistani military carried out an anti-Taliban offensive in Bajur in 2008 and 2009 that it declared a success. But the militants have maintained their presence, and violence has flared in the region since then.
The bullet-riddled bodies of a man and a woman were found in the Mamund area of Bajur on Sunday with a note saying they were guilty of violating Islamic law, local official Faromosh Khan said.
Militants have stepped up attacks in other parts of the northwest as well in apparent retaliation for the recent South Waziristan offensive.
The suicide car bombing in the northwest village of Shah Hasan Khel near South Waziristan that killed 96 people on New Year's Day was one of the deadliest attacks since the army launched the operation.
The suspected U.S. drone missile strikes that killed five men Sunday near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan targeted the house of a well-known tribesman and a vehicle nearby, said intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
One of the five killed in the attack was the tribesman's grandson, said the officials. It was unclear if the four others were militants or civilians.
U.S. officials rarely discuss the missile strikes, and although Pakistan's government publicly condemns them as violations of its sovereignty, many analysts believe the two countries have a secret deal allowing them.
