A suicide bomber blew himself near a police check post in the northwestern Pakistani town of Bannu on Tuesday killing three people, including a policeman, the military said. Pakistan saw a wave of suicide bomb attacks after an army assault on a radical mosque in the capital last July, but there has been a lull since the formation in March of a new government that has called for talks to end the violence. Tuesday's attack, in which a bomber traveling in an auto-rickshaw taxi blew himself up as a policeman stopped him near a check post in the town in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), was the second since then. “Three personnel embraced shahadat (martyrdom) including a policeman and two civilians,” the military said in a statement. Four people were wounded, it said. The new government, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has begun talks with elders of ethnic Pashtun tribes along the Afghan border with whom militants have taken refuge. The militants announced a ceasefire last month but later said they were rejecting negotiations mediated by the elders after the government refused to withdraw troops from their stronghold areas. Also on Tuesday, suspected militants shot dead two policemen outside a bank in the Swat Valley, in NWFP, in the second killing in two days in the region where the army has been battling militants since last year. The valley was a main tourist destination until last year, when militants rallied to a radical cleric trying to impose Taleban-style rule and began attacking police.
