Pakistan condemns attack on anti-Taliban tribal leaders

Islamabad: Pakistan condemned a suicide bomb attack on a meeting of anti-Taliban tribal leaders in Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun zone near the border with Afghanistan that killed at least 10 people.

The blast took place as elders from the Salarzai tribe gathered to plan attacks on Taliban supporters in Bajaur, a border district, Iqbal Khattak, a government official in Khar, the district centre, said on Thursday. Thirty-one men were injured.

Armed Salarzai tribesmen have backed a three-month-old Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban in Bajaur, burning the homes of suspected Taliban supporters. Those killed in yesterday's attack included a Salarzai tribal chief, Fazle-Karim Khan, Dawn News television said, citing the district's parliamentary representative.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani demanded the perpetrators of the "heinous'' attack be hunted down, while President Asif Ali Zardari pledged that extremism would be "eradicated'' from the country, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

Pakistan's army is fighting to reverse the Taliban's takeover last year of Bajaur and the Swat Valley to the east.

General David Petraeus, who has assumed responsibility for the US's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, visited Pakistan for talks earlier this week.

Petraeus, who took over as head of US Central Command on October 31, told Zardari, Gilani and Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani that extremists in tribal areas were a threat to Pakistan's existence.