By Aamir Latif
KARACHI, Pakistan
At least six police officers have been killed and seven others injured in two separate attacks in Pakistan.
For the second time in a week, police patrolling in southwestern Baluchistan's provincial capital Quetta were ambushed, according to city police chief Abdul Razzak Cheema, who told reporters four officers were killed.
Another four officers were killed in a similar attack, in the same area of Quetta, last Saturday.
The ambushes follow the killing of 22 passengers on a bus in the Mastung district, some 50 kilometers from Quetta earlier this month.
The large Baluchistan province, which is also considered to cover parts of neighboring Iran and Afghanistan, is strategically important because of the rich presence of copper, zinc and natural gas but has beset by violence for over six decades, with separatists claiming that it was forcibly incorporated into Pakistan at the end of British rule in 1947.
Another two police officers were killed in Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.
A Taliban suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden motorbike into a police vehicle, in an attempt to target senior police official Malik Tariq, according to Mian Saeed, a city police chief.
Seven policemen, including Tariq, were also injured in the suicide attack, Saeed added.
– 10 “militants" killed in North Waziristan
Pakistan's army claim to have killed 10 suspected militants in a clash in the restive northwestern North Waziristan tribal area on Thursday.
The army's media wing, Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), said the clash was in the remote Dattakhel town, near the Afghan border.
It followed a large clash in the Shawal valley, also in North Waziristan, that saw 19 militants seven soldiers killed on Monday.
North Waziristan is one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in Pakistan that touch neighboring Afghanistan and has been the focus of an anti-militant operation launched by Pakistan's army on June 15.
According to the Pakistan army, over 2,600 suspected militants have been killed in aerial strikes and clashes with the Taliban during the operations.
The military operation has displaced nearly one million tribesmen from North Waziristan.
