A suicide car bomber attacked a prison van while gunmen torched six NATO oil tankers in separate strikes on Saturday that killed four Pakistani police officers and wounded 10 others, authorities said.
Meanwhile, the army kept up its pressure on the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal belt, killing 20 suspected fighters, while apparent US missiles killed five alleged insurgents in a nearby northwest region, officials said.
The oil tankers were hit in Chakwal district — a rare, possibly unprecedented assault in Punjab province. Militants and ordinary criminals frequently attack trucks that travel along supply routes used by NATO and US forces in Afghanistan, but usually in the northwest Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa or southwest Baluchistan provinces.
Suspected militants in two pick-up trucks drove up to the gas station where the tankers were parked and opened fire before setting the vehicles aflame. Four police officers responding to the scene were killed, police officer Aslam Tareen said.
Chakwal is not far from the Punjab border with Northwest Province.
On Saturday morning, a suicide car bomber targeted a prison van as it arrived at a jail in Timergarah to pick up prisoners to take to the nearby Swat Valley, senior police official Shakeel Khan said.
No prisoners were in the van at the time, but 10 police officials were wounded.
Timergarah is in Lower Dir district, which is near the Afghan border. It was a militant stronghold until spring last year when a military offensive there and in Swat largely reclaimed the areas from insurgents.
Pakistan followed that offensive with one in South Waziristan tribal region, a key haven for the Pakistani Taliban.
Many militants there have since fled to other areas such as Orakzai, another part of the lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leading the army to open up new fronts.
Troops on Saturday raided a militant ammunition depot in Sangra village in Orakzai, killing 10 alleged insurgents, with one solider wounded, local administrator Jehanzeb Khan said.
Airstrikes later destroyed three more hideouts, killing another 10 suspects, Khan said.
The information is nearly impossible to verify independently — access to the tribal belt and regions such as Dir is difficult due to the dangerous, remote nature of the terrain and legal restrictions.
The US has relied heavily on its covert campaign of drone-based missile strikes to take out targets in the tribal areas.
A suspected US missile strike in the Machi Khel area of North Waziristan killed five alleged insurgents at a compound, said two intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
North Waziristan is dominated by militant factions focused on fighting US and NATO forces across the border. Washington wants Islamabad to take action against these groups, but the Pakistani authorities have resisted, saying they have their hands full with offensives against the Pakistani Taliban, a network that seeks to overthrow the Pakistani state.
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