A suicide car-bomber killed a pro-government ethnic Pashtun tribal leader and four other people in northwest Pakistan on Monday, police and security officials said. Pakistani soldiers, separately, killed 10 militants in an artillery barrage on a rebel stronghold. Violence has been picking up in northwest Pakistan after a relative lull that followed the killing of the Pakistani Taleban leader in a U.S. drone attack last month, and after troops made gains in an assault launched in the Swat region in April. Monday's attack near the town of Bannu in North West Frontier Province came two days after two suicide bomb attacks, one of them in Bannu, killed 27 people. “The bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the vehicle carrying Abdul Hakeem and his two guards, killing them on the spot,” said Wali Hayat Khan, a police official in the region, referring to the tribal elder. Two passers-by were also killed, witnesses said. The attack will compound fears that the Taleban are re-organizing and striking back against the government and its allies after setbacks which led to the interior minister proclaiming that the back of the militants had been broken. Separately, the army fired artillery at militants in the South Waziristan Islamist stronghold on the Afghan border after the militants attacked a military base in neighboring North Waziristan killing one person, security officials said.Ten militants were killed in the artillery barrage, the security officials said. Pakistani action in its northwest is vital for U.S. efforts to get to grips with an intensifying Taleban insurgency in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in an assessment leaked to the media last week the Afghan insurgency was supported from Pakistan and Afghanistan needed Pakistani action.
