Bomb kills 3 kids who were curious about its contents in Pakistan’s northwest, say police

Bomb kills 3 children in NW Pakistan, say police

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A bomb planted near a house in northwestern Pakistan exploded Wednesday after children playing nearby tried to open it, killing three of them, said police.

The blast partly destroyed the house in Nanger Khani village in Upper Dir, an area near Pakistan’s volatile Afghan border, said police official Gul Zameen Khan. Police are investigating why the bomb was placed there, he said.

Pakistan has been plagued by rising violence from a Taliban-led insurgency that has declared war on the government. Many of the militants are concentrated in the country’s northwest, but violence has spread to many other areas of the country in the past couple years.

Thirteen police and civilian explosives experts were wounded Wednesday when a homemade bomb they were trying to defuse in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir detonated, said police official Iftikhar Kiani. The explosives were hidden in a milk container planted on a road leading to a military base, he said.

Two of the wounded men were transferred to the garrison town of Rawalpindi outside the capital, Islamabad, because of the serious nature of their injuries, said Kiani.

Muslim militants have fought for decades to free Kashmir, which is split between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, from New Delhi’s rule. Pakistan-controlled Kashmir has served as a base for anti-India insurgents to train and launch attacks across the disputed border, but violence in the area is relatively rare.