Roadside bomb kills four soldiers in northwest Pakistan

A roadside bomb has killed four soldiers in a restive northwestern tribal area in Pakistan, security officials say.

The bomb went off in the village of Warmagai in Kurram Valley on Tuesday, when a vehicle belonging to a bomb-disposal squad was traveling ahead of a convoy to clear the road.

“At least four soldiers were martyred when a bomb planted on a roadside hit a security forces convoy,” a senior security official said on the condition of anonymity.

Kurram, bordering three provinces in Afghanistan, is one the most volatile tribal areas of Pakistan.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but pro-Taliban militants have been blamed for most of the attacks against security forces in Pakistan.

The semi-autonomous tribal regions on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan have been a hideout for Takfiri militant groups, including al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, during the past years.

Pakistan has intensified its anti-terror campaign against militant groups following a December 16, 2014 attack on an army-run school in the city of Peshawar, which claimed the lives of more than 140 people, 134 of them children.

The Pakistani army started military operations against militant hideouts in North Waziristan in June 2014, after a deadly raid on the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi ended the government’s faltering peace talks with pro-Taliban militants.