PESHAWAR: An anti-tank mine exploded Friday under a minibus, killing 15 wedding guests on a road used by government forces in Pakistan’s tribal belt on the Afghan border, officials said.
The incident took place at Baizai Tehsil in the Sorandara area of Mohmand, where security forces have been pressing an offensive against rebels in what is part of Pakistan’s tribal belt, where al Qaeda-linked militants are holed up.
‘A vehicle carrying passengers to a wedding hit an anti-tank mine, killing 15 people and wounding six others,’ a senior local administration official, Maqsood Khan, told AFP.
Another senior administration official, Rasool Khan, confirmed the incident and number of casualties. Most of the dead were women and children, he said. The bodies of those killed and the injured have been shifted to the Ghananai Hospital.
The same road is used extensively by Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC), which demolished several houses of suspected militants in the Sorandara area during raids Thursday.
Security forces launched a huge operation against militants in Mohmand and Bajaur last August. In February, they said Bajaur had been cleared after months of fierce fighting, but unrest has rumbled on.
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