A remote-controlled bomb killed two pro-government tribal elders and wounded another on Monday in Bajaur, security officials said. The officials said the elders were apparently targeted for supporting Islamabad's efforts to purge the semi-autonomous frontier region of Taliban and al Qaeda militants who fled Afghanistan in 2001.
The blast happened when the trio left a house in Charmang Seddah Shah village, near Khar, the main town in the Bajaur tribal region, to go to a nearby market, they said. "It was an act of terrorism," one of the security officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A military air strike on an Islamic religious school in Bajaur in October 2006 left 80 people dead. Officials said it was an al Qaeda training camp but locals said the victims were students. An alleged CIA missile strike in another part of Bajaur killed 18 people in January 2006. Al Qaeda's Egyptian deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was said to have escaped the attack.