A suicide bomber blew himself up in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday killing 16 people as police tried to search him, police said. The bomber was trying to get into a van taxi in the city of Dera Ismail Khan when police confronted him and told him to remove a shawl he had wrapped around him, police said. The bomber, who was in his teens, then set off his explosives killing two policemen, a paramilitary soldier and 13 civilians. "Most of the dead were in the vehicle," said police officer Abdul Hayee Babar.Several hundred people have been killed in violence since July, most of them in the northwest, but more than 50 people have been killed in suicide blasts in Islamabad and the nearby city of Rawalpindi, where the army has its headquarters.
Separately, security officials said at least seven people were killed in clashes with pro-Taliban fighters in the South Waziristan region, also in the northwest on the Afghan border, where militants are holding about 240 soldiers captive. Clashes in the Makeen area began early on Monday and went on through the night as militants attacked a school where security forces had set up camp.