A Pakistani soldier and a civilian were killed and eight other people were wounded on Tuesday when two vehicles hit separate landmines in a remote area near the Afghan border, officials said. Troops on patrol in South Waziristan's once-volatile Shakai Valley hit a mine at dawn, a local administration official said on condition of anonymity.
"This was the first blast in Shakai in more than one year. It left one soldier dead and five injured," the official said.
He blamed the attack on "miscreants", official jargon for Taleban insurgents and their al Qaeda allies who are believed to have fled into Pakistan after the Taleban was toppled from power in Afghanistan in 2001 in a US-led campaign.
A civilian car also struck a landmine in the valley, an intelligence official told AFP. One man was killed and three other people hurt, he said. They had been returning from a tribal authority meeting.
Shakai Valley has been relatively calm since the Pakistan army launched a massive operation in June last year to flush out militants hiding in the restive tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, authorities detained eight villagers after four rockets were fired into an army camp in neighbouring North Waziristan late Monday, another administration official told AFP.
No one was hurt in the camp, which was also hit by two rockets on Sunday.
The men were arrested because the rockets had come from the direction of their village. They were held under a law that makes all people living in tribal territories responsible for what happens in their area.
Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led "war on terror", has deployed about 80,000 troops to the tribal belt to stop militants moving across the porous border.
It said last week it had busted the biggest al Qaeda base in adjoining North Waziristan and recovered huge caches of weapons.
The military killed more than 300 militants, some of them foreigners, in a series of operations in South Waziristan last year. About 250 soldiers were also killed.
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