Eight dead in Pakistan blast as Taliban targeted in tribal belt

Miranshah, Pakistan (AFP) June 15, 2009: The latest in a string of bombs in northwest Pakistan killed eight people Sunday as a US missile strike hit a tribal belt where troops are expected to launch a fresh anti-Taliban onslaught.
Militants remotely-detonated explosives hidden in a rickshaw, causing chaos at a busy Sunday market in Dera Ismail Khan town, with eight people killed and dozens injured, police and hospital officials said.
Dera Ismail Khan is about 300 kilometres (186 miles) south of the provincial capital Peshawar, where a commando-style suicide gun and bomb attack killed nine people at the luxury Pearl Continental hotel on Tuesday.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack and twin bombings at mosques on Friday, exacting revenge for a seven-week military offensive against them across swathes of the northwest.
"Eight people have been killed and 20 injured in the blast," said Syed Mohsin Shah, the top administrator of Dera Ismail Khan town.
"The bomb was planted in a cycle-rickshaw and it was rush hour in the bazaar at the time of blast," he told AFP.
Dera Ismail Khan district borders the lawless tribal agency of South Waziristan, where a suspected missile strike by a US drone aircraft targeting Islamist extremists killed at least three people Sunday, officials said.
"A drone attack targeting a militant vehicle killed three people in Mardar Algad area," said Amir Mohammad Khan, a local administration official.
A security official based in Peshawar told AFP: "Uzbek and Arab militants were killed in the strike."
Washington alleges that Al-Qaeda and Taliban senior leaders and fighters who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion are holed up in South Waziristan, plotting attacks on Western targets.
The US military does not confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the CIA operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy unmanned drones in the region.
Pakistan publicly opposes drone attacks, saying they violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the populace.
Pakistan's military has also recently bombed militant hideouts in South Waziristan -- a rugged, semi-autonomous region on the Afghan border -- as they escalate a seven-week campaign to crush Taliban militants.
In its daily briefing Sunday, the military confirmed that 30 suspected militants were killed in strikes in South Waziristan a day earlier.
In another tribal area of Bajaur -- the focus of a military campaign against the Taliban last year -- jet planes bombed hideouts Sunday killing four suspected militants, local government and security officials told AFP.
Security forces launched the latest offensive against Taliban fighters across three northwestern districts near Swat valley on April 26, after the insurgents advanced to within 100 kilometres (60 miles) of Islamabad.
A US defence official said Friday that the tribal zone on the Afghan border would be targeted by Pakistani forces next.
The region is a stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, the head of Pakistan's umbrella Taliban organisation, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The unnamed senior US defence official said Pakistan was planning "a separate campaign in South Waziristan" and noted that a strategy would work best with pressure on militants from both sides of the border.
A 90,000-strong US and international coalition is fighting Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan.
The United States has adopted a new strategy to defeat Islamist extremists, putting Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda and sending an extra 21,000 US troops to Afghanistan.
"Pakistani forces can hit Taliban in both Swat and Waziristan," said Ikram Sehgal, an analyst and columnist with Defence Journal (Pakistan).
"US forces should hit them on the Afghan side, and Pakistani forces should hit them in Pakistani territory," he told AFP.
More than 1,980 people have been killed in Taliban-linked attacks in Pakistan since July 2007, with nearly 170 killed since the military launched the anti-Taliban offensive in late April.