Over 30 killed in Pak suicide attacks

Suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda militants carried out a series of suicide bombings in Pakistan's restive North West Frontier Province (NWFP), killing 35 people, most of them security personnel, in a backlash to the bloody military crackdown on the Lal Masjid.

The country's volatile tribal areas were turned into virtual killing fields in three different suicide attacks. A suicide bomber struck a police station in the city of Dera Ismail Khan when recruitment of policemen was going on, District Police Officer Gul Afzal Afridi said.

Earlier in the day, two more suicide bomb attacks were directed against troops in the Swat area in NWFP, killing 15 people, including 11 army personnel.

"The law enforcement agencies are facing trouble in stopping the suicide bombings," Pakistan Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said.

"The suicide attacks in Dera Ismail Khan and Swat valley have linkages to the Lal Masjid operation," he told reporters here.

Three improvised devices exploded when the army convoy was heading to Matta, a town around 25 km from Mingora, the largest city in the Swat valley, Pakistan Defence Spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said, adding four civilians were also killed in the blasts.

"At least 20 policemen were killed in the blast," PTV quoted officials as saying.

Though there were no claims, the attack was believed to have been carried out by local pro-Taliban militants who owed allegiance to radical clerics of the Lal Masjid.