At least 10 people were killed in a suicide attack in Pakistan's Swat valley yesterday, a day after a series of bombings brought chaos and bloodshed to the city of Lahore, police said.
The bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a building used by security forces in Saidu Sharif, on the edge of Mingora, the main town in Swat, where the military said last year it had quelled a Taliban uprising.
Pakistan's Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, in which three security personnel and a nine-year-old child were among the dead.
Senior police official Qazi Jamil confirmed the death toll, adding that 37 were wounded.
"It was a suicide attack," he told AFP. "The suicide bomber was on foot. He was trying to enter the building and blew himself up after being stopped by police."
The bomber was carrying 15 kilos of explosives and almost two dozen vehicles were damaged, he added.
A spokesman for the army-run Swat media centre also confirmed the death toll, adding that two policemen and one soldier were killed.
Pakistan launched a blistering air and ground offensive in the valley after militants marched out of Swat and advanced to within 100 km of the capital Islamabad in April 2009.
The army says the area is now safe and most of the two million people who fled their homes have returned, but sporadic violence continues and some fear the Swat Taliban are regrouping elsewhere in the northwest.
A suicide car bomber hit a military convoy last month in the centre of Mingora, killing nine people, including children.
After yesterday's attack the area was cordoned off by security forces and all shops and markets were closed, residents said.
A spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed his organisation was responsible for the attack, saying more would follow as long as army operations continued in Pakistan's tribal belt.
"These people are fighting against us to please America. As long as they do not stop the military operation, we will carry out more such attacks," spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Last Friday, twin suicide attacks targeted the Pakistani military, killing 57 people in the crowded R A Bazaar area of Lahore. Five small bombs later exploded in the cultural capital, causing no casualties.
Swat has been held up as a success in Pakistan's fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants by local and US officials, who have praised the military for apparently ending a two-year local Taliban insurgency.
The former ski and tourist resort, once favoured for its pristine natural beauty, slipped from Islamabad's control in July 2007 after radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah mounted a violent campaign to enforce Islamic sharia law. Separately, residents recovered the bullet-riddled bodies of six militants in the Kurram tribal district near the Afghan border, an official said.
"There was infighting among two militants groups. One group killed six of the rival group and fled... Residents discovered these corpses today," Mumtaz Khan, a local administrative official in the area, told AFP.