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Militant recruiting drive ends in gunfire

Police killed two suspected militant recruiters in a gunbattle at a boys school after hearing they were trying to sign up students for suicide bombings and holy war, officials said.

One police officer was killed by a hand grenade during the brief clash.

Three suspected militants turned up at the privately run Oxford Public School in Tank, a town in northwestern Pakistan about 100km from the Afghan border, on Monday morning, local police chief Mumtaz Khan said.

"We heard that they were looking for children to prepare them for jihad and for suicide attacks," Khan said.

No students were hurt in the clash.

The school, which teaches English to boys between the ages of five and 17, was closed when a reporter visited later on Monday and its administrators could not be reached for comment.

Police said the militants had asked the school's administrators to assemble the students so they could address them, but ran outside the school grounds when officers arrived.

One of the militants threw a hand grenade that fatally wounded one police officer, Khan said.

The officers opened fire, killing the militant and injuring one of his companions.

The third suspect was arrested.

The wounded militant died later on Monday at a hospital, an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to make comments to the media.

Police originally reported that five militants were killed, but Khan said that the information had been incorrect.

Soon after, a grenade attack on a police patrol in Tank wounded three police officers and seven bystanders.

Khan suspected members of the same network were responsible. Grenades were later hurled at a police station and an armored police vehicle, but no one was hurt.

Khan described the militants as "local Taliban," a term commonly used to describe militants in the tribal belt along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

Tank is on the edge of South Waziristan, a stronghold of militants aligned with the Taliban movement fighting in neighboring Afghanistan and of foreign militants linked with al-Qaeda.

Officials have suggested that militants from the region were behind a string of suicide attacks earlier this year, including one at a five-star hotel in the country's capital, Islamabad, but authorities have announced no breakthrough in their investigations.

Militant groups also recruit young Pakistani men to fight against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and in some cases, become suicide bombers.

Meanwhile, a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded in the northwestern city of Peshawar, damaging a bank and nearby shops.

Four people were injured in the explosion, including a former lawmaker who owns a hotel in front of which the bombing occurred, said Iftikhar Khan, a senior Peshawar police officer.
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