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PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A mine killed 16 wedding guests in Pakistan's tribal belt on Friday while a suicide bomber targeted an air force base, inflicting another reverse on the military in its war on the Taliban.
A car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the northwestern city of Peshawar, wounding 15 and underlining the threat to civilians in a nation where more than 190 people have died during Taliban-linked attacks in 19 days.
The explosion ripped through the wedding party minibus in the Sorandara area of Mohmand, where security forces have been pressing an offensive against Islamist rebels for more than a year.
Troops are waging a separate offensive in South Waziristan, another part of the tribal belt where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants are believed to have planned attacks on Pakistan targets and on the West.
The Red Cross complained on Friday that relief workers were being kept out of the area, believing that the number of civilian casualties is mounting sharply.
"A vehicle carrying passengers to a wedding hit an anti-tank mine, killing 16 people including two men, five women and nine children," the top political official in Mohmand, Amjad Ali Khan, told AFP.
Another senior administration official, Rasool Khan, said most of the dead were women and children.
The road is used extensively by Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps, whose locally drawn personnel have been dragged into fighting with the Taliban.
Pakistan's semi-autonomous northwest tribal belt has become a stronghold for hundreds of extremists who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001.
Security forces launched a huge operation against Islamist militants in Mohmand and Bajaur last August, but unrest has rumbled on.
The Islamists' ability to take the fight to the military's front door was illustrated when a bomber blew himself up during morning rush hour in the town of Kamra, near the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex. Eight people were killed.
District police chief Fakhar Sultan said the attack killed six civilians and two Pakistan Air Force personnel.
The Air Force said 15 security staff were wounded and confirmed two of its personnel died when the bomber blew himself up at the checkpoint outside the base, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) west of the capital Islamabad.
The explosion in Peshawar was a car bomb, detonated in the wealthy district of Hayatabad, officials said.
"Fifteen people were wounded in the explosion. Six sustained minor wounds while nine are still being treated. Two people are critical," said local administration official Sahibzada Mohammad Anis.
Separately four militants were killed in Khyber and 15 in Mohmand, two of seven tribal districts bordering Afghanistan, the paramilitary said.
A series of attacks blamed on extremists has left at least 193 dead this month in the frontline state in the US-led battle with global extremism.
The military has been a major target. On Thursday in Islamabad, gunmen killed a brigadier and his driver.
On October 10, militants ambushed the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in an audacious attack claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) movement.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the attacks and vowed the government would not waver in its resolve to "root out terrorism" with nearly 30,000 troops fighting against the TTP in South Waziristan.
The offensive presents the nuclear-armed country with its toughest fight to date against the radicals, blamed for attacks that have killed 2,280 people in Pakistan in two years.
"What we see now is a sharp and extremely worrying increase in the number of civilian casualties," said Jacques de Maio, International Committee of the Red Cross head of operations for south Asia.
Pakistan's army says 142 militants and 20 soldiers have been killed since the operation against an estimated 10,000 fighters began on Saturday and over 120,000 civilians have fled the war zone.
Backed by helicopter gunships and warplanes, troops have been locked in heavy fighting that underscores the difficulty of dislodging diehard Taliban from bastions such as Kotkai.
Top aides to Hillary Clinton said on Friday the US secretary of state will go to Pakistan "soon" for high-level talks there, but her travel dates are being kept secret for security reasons.
- AFP/so
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