Militants in Pakistan attacked a convoy carrying food into a violence-plagued region on Thursday, killing a driver, but five of them were killed when security forces retaliated, an official said. Sunni Muslim militants have been attacking vehicles going into the Shiite-majority Kurram ethnic Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border for months. As a result, paramilitary troops have been escorting supply convoys into the area but they have come under attack. A senior government official in Parachinar, the main town in the region, said militants ambushed a convoy killing a driver and they then set fire to three trucks loaded with goods. “We responded with helicopter gunships and killed at least five attackers and wounded four,” the official, Atta-ur-Rehman, told Reuters. Sectarian tension has risen in Kurram and several parts of the North West Frontier Province in recent months as Sunni Muslim Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked militants have been expanding their influence across the region.
