A roadside bomb has killed two pro-government tribal elders on Monday in Pakistan's restive north-west region, near the Afghan border, officials say. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Bajaur, the most northerly region in Pakistan's tribal belt, though al-Qaeda-linked militants active in these areas have been blamed for such incidents in the past. The tribal elders were travelling in a car through Sayed Charmangh area, some 20 kilometres east of Bajaur's main town of Khar, when the bomb went off. "The two men died instantly while their third colleague sustained injuries and has been hospitalised," a local government official said.
Bajaur and North and South Waziristan regions, which lie at the southern end of the tribal belt, pose the greatest security threat among Pakistan's seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Up to 20 people were killed in an air strike by Pakistan army helicopters on a militant camp in South Waziristan last month. A spate of suicide bombings in the capital Islamabad and several towns in northern Pakistan after that attack, killing around 28 people, raised fears that the conflict in the semi-autonomous tribal belt was spreading towards the cities.