At least 23 people, including four soldiers and 10 pro-Taliban militants, were killed and 35 others injured today in a suicide bombing and an attack on a military check post in Pakistan's restive tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
Nine people were killed and 31 injured when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into another vehicle in Parachinar, the headquarters of Kurrum tribal agency in North West Frontier Province, reports reaching here said.
The taxi which was hit by the suicide bomber was parked in a parking area of Eidgah market. Five shops and several vehicles were also destroyed in the incident.
Power supply in various parts of the city was suspended as some electric wires had fallen down following the incident.
The injured, several of them in critical condition, were shifted to the agency headquarters Parachinar, which is about 290 km west of Islamabad and is the closest point in Pakistan to Kabul and borders on the Tora Bora region in Afghanistan.
No group has yet claimed the responsibility of the attack but officials suspected it was carried out by pro-Taliban militants.
In another incident, four soldiers and 10 pro-Taliban militants were killed and four people injured in an early morning attack by the militants on Dossali military check-post near Miranshah, the headquarters of the North Waziristan
tribal agency.
"Militants launched a massive attack on the Dosali check post near Miranshah, fired over 50 rockets and attacked the check post with small arms which was repulsed by troops," Pakistan's Defence spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told reporters in Islamabad.