Roadside bombs kill 2 soldiers in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) ? Two roadside bombs killed two soldiers in a restive northwestern region of Pakistan on Sunday while a gun attack in the country's south killed two more, officials said.

Two intelligence officials said three soldiers sweeping the road ahead of a military convoy on the road between the towns of Miran Shah and Razmak in North Waziristan were hit Sunday by a bomb planted near an intersection. Two died and one was wounded. They spoke anonymously because they weren't authorized to speak to media.

The same officials reported a second blast on the Mir Ali-Miran Shah road near a checkpoint, but that wounded only one soldier.

The Pakistani army recently carried out several offensives in tribal regions along the Afghan border but is reluctant to conduct a massive sweep of the militant stronghold of North Waziristan, despite the US urging it to do so.

Also on Sunday, four gunmen riding on motorcycles opened fire on a police patrol in the southern city of Karachi, killing two officers and wounding a third one, said Usman Bajwa, a senior police officer.

Bajwa said the police patrol had deployed in a central neighborhood of Karachi, the country's main commercial hub, where two political workers were similarly gunned down by armed motorcycle riders yesterday.

He said the gunmen fired 15 shots from their pistols into a police vehicle, killing two officers and leaving a third struggling for his life.

The police officer said seven people were gunned down, including a police officer and two political workers, in different incidents in the city yesterday. He said the attacks appeared part of a "plot" to destabilize Karachi.

The volatile megacity frequently witnesses deadly shootings linked to a range of groups, including Islamic militants, political parties, crime gangs, rival ethnic groups, and others.

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Associated Press reporter Adil Jawad in Karachi contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-09-Pakistan/id-adde6095246341e5b070e80c27676d63

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