Pakistani police chief killed in attack on stations

Teams of coordinated suicide attackers struck two police stations in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing a local police chief and wounding four officers in the latest assault on government officials, authorities said.

Elsewhere in the troubled northwest, the Pakistani army said it had killed 30 militants Saturday in an airstrike in South Waziristan, a Taliban-dominated sanctuary near the Afghan border where the army launched a major offensive in October.

Police official Gul Zareen said the suicide attacks started within minutes of each other in the district of Mansehra. Local police chief Khalil Khan died and two officers and two passers-by were wounded when an attacker blew himself up inside the police station in Mansehra, he said.

In the second attack, a pair of attackers stormed another police station about 15 miles (25 kilometers) away in the town of Balakot, triggering a shootout that left one of the attackers dead.

Two officers were wounded in the Balakot shooting. Zareen said the slain attacker was wearing a suicide jacket.

The second attacker fled toward nearby offices, and officers were trying to track him down, he said.

Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, and Islamist militants allied with al—Qaida and the Taliban have stepped up attacks on police and security forces in recent years in addition to aiding attacks on NATO troops across the border in Afghanistan.

However, such assaults are rare in Mansehra, which lies in a “settled area” only about 90 miles (140 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Islamabad. Pakistan dismantled militant training facilities there following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Other large swathes of Pakistan’s lawless northwest near the Afghan border have been virtually taken over by faction of the Pakistani Taliban, including South Waziristan, where Saturday’s airstrikes took place.

An army statement says it targeted a militant hide-out in the Shawal mountains of South Waziristan on Saturday on a tip off that insurgents were hiding there.

It said 30 militants were killed but provided no further details.

Shawal is believed to be one of the al-Qaeda and Taliban strongholds in the area.

Although the government in December said the South Waziristan operation to break militant control had been completed, the army is still busy in search operations in the region.