Police say at least 5 people killed, 25 wounded in suicide attack in northwestern Pakistan

Police: 5 killed in NW Pakistan suicide attack

ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomber on foot targeted a group of Shiite Muslims on two buses in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least five people and wounding 25 others in the latest violence to rock the Afghan border region, police said.

The attack may have been motivated by sectarian tensions between Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites. However, the area also is near al-Qaida and Taliban-controlled parts of Pakistan’s tribal belt.

The victims, which included women, were at a gas station in the town of Hangu, police official Omar Hayat said. The wounded were taken to nearby hospitals, as police investigated the scene.

Pakistan’s northwest has been bedeviled for years by Islamist extremist violence fueled by anger over the war in Afghanistan and Islamabad’s alliance with Washington. An army offensive that began in October against the Pakistani Taliban spurred a bloody wave of attacks across the country that killed more than 600 people.

But with the exception of a few attacks on northwest police stations, violence appears to have subsided in recent weeks, an indication that the army operation in the South Waziristan tribal region may be having an impact.

Sectarian tensions are another matter.

Although most of Pakistan’s Sunnis and Shiites live in peace, their extremists have often targeted each other’s leaders in violence that dates from well before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States that prompted many Islamist militias to turn their guns on Islamabad.

Several of Pakistan’s Sunni extremist groups also are allied with the Taliban and al-Qaida, who view Shiites as infidels. The Sunni-Shiite schism over the true heir to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad dates back to the seventh century.