Seven die as militant's car bomb accidentally explodes

A powerful car bomb has accidentally detonated at the house of a Pakistani Taliban militant in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least two children and five suspected militants, police said.

The explosion took place before dawn on Thursday in the city of Mir Ali in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when a man identified a local commander of the militants, Rasool Jan, was fitting a bomb in a car at his house, police official Irfan Khan said.

He said other militants from the Pakistani Taliban group quickly arrived at the scene and removed the bodies of the insurgents who died. Authorities later found the bodies of two children in the rubble of the house, which collapsed in the explosion.

The blast also badly damaged several nearby homes and wounded 14 people, including women. Some of the injured were in critical condition in a hospital, Khan said, but he did not provide details.

The Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents in the region often target security forces with assault rifles, rockets, grenades and suicide car bombings, and Khan said it appeared the car bomb was being prepared for such an attack.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, are separate from the Afghan Taliban but have been emboldened by the group's takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.

Also Thursday, security forces raided a hideout of insurgents in Harnai, a district in restive southwestern Balochistan province, triggering an intense shootout in which a soldier and three insurgents were killed. During the operation, an army major was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle, the military said in a statement.

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif paid tribute to whom they called the "martyred soldiers" in separate statements. They said the fight against terrorism will continue until the elimination of all insurgents.

Elsewhere in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Thursday, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle set off an explosive device prematurely on a deserted road in Charsadda district, killing himself but harming no one else, police said.

Local police official Masood Khan said the intended target was unclear and bomb disposal experts and police were still investigating whether the man was wearing the explosives or they were attached to his motorcycle.