A roadside bombing targeted a minivan in Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 10 people, a government official and the military said.
The blast ripped through the van as it was traveling through a minority Shiite region of the Kurram tribal area, which borders Afghanistan, said Arif Khan, a tribal administration official in the town of Parachinar.
The area has long been the scene of sectarian violence.
A woman and two children were among those killed, Khan said.
The explosion also wounded 13 people. With few adequate medical facilities in the area, a Pakistani army helicopter evacuated the wounded to a nearby military hospital.
A spokesman for the Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban group, said the explosive device had been intended to target the country’s Shiite minority and workers in the area carrying out a census.
“Our target was the Shia community and census team in the area,” spokesman Asad Mansur said.
Pakistan is conducting a nationwide census and militants have frequently targeted officials collecting the data.
Four census officials were wounded in the blast, senior regional official Shahid Ali Khan said.
Islamabad has also undertaken several large-scale offensives in the tribal regions in an effort to rout militants from the area.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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