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| India-Pakistan |
| Bomb kills two children in Khar: official |
| 2009-08-13 |
| [Dawn] Two schoolboys were killed and their brother injured Wednesday when a bomb exploded in a Pakistan village playground near the Afghan border, officials said. The trio, all brothers, were playing when the explosive device went off in Nisarabad village on the outskirts of Khar, the main town in the Bajaur tribal region, local administration chief, Adalat Khan, told AFP. Two of them, aged between nine and 11 years, were killed and their 13-year-old brother wounded, he said. They were school students, he said. A security official confirmed the casualties, saying that it was unclear if the bomb was planted by militants or was left during a six-month battle fought between government forces and Islamist insurgents. Hundreds of people were killed in the fighting which saw heavy artillery and helicopter gunships pound Bajaur, to purge the area of militants. The fighting ended in February when the military claimed to have 'secured' the area. 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. |
| Posted by:Fred |