Bomb targeting Pakistani police kills 2 people, wounds 12 in southwest city of Quetta

Bomb kills 2, wounds 12 in southwest Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan — Police say a bomb planted on a bicycle exploded as a police van passed by in the city of Quetta, killing at least 2 people and wounding 12.

A senior police official says the bomb was apparently detonated by remote control. The police van was badly damaged in Sunday’s attack, but it was not immediately clear if any police officers were among the casualties.

Quetta is the capital of the insurgency-hit southwestern province of Balochistan, where the government has been fighting ethnic Balochi militants.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

MIR ALI, Pakistan (AP) — The bullet-riddled bodies of four tribesmen killed for allegedly spying for the United States were found Sunday in a semiautonomous Pakistani region, witnesses and officials said.

Officials said the four were kidnapped by the Taliban about ten days ago.

Gul Akber Khan, who lives in the village of Srakhula, just outside of Mir Ali, said he heard gunshots in the middle of the night. When he went to the mosque for morning prayers a few hours later, he found the bodies dumped along the road into Miran Shah, the main city in North Waziristan.

Intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, say a note was found by one of the corpses. It warned, in Pashto: “Spies are spies, and they will come to the same fate as these men. … Do not spy for America.”

The tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, strongholds for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, have seen bloody fighting and regular attacks by American drone aircraft as the Pakistani and U.S. governments try to defeat the Islamist militants.