Five students die in explosion at Baloch religious school

Quetta: An explosion killed five students at an Islamic school near the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, police said.

Quetta is the capital of Balochistan, a southwestern province bordering Afghanistan, where a large number of schools, or madrasas, were set up in the 1980s to raise volunteers to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in a war covertly funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The Taliban movement sprang from these mad-rasas in the 1990s.

Explosives

"The madrasa people say that someone threw explosives into the madrasa, but we are investigating," police official Wazir Khan Naser said.

However, another police official said the blast occurred in a room of the madrasa, blowing its walls outward, suggesting there could have been some explosives inside the room.

"We are looking into all possibilities including the possibility that they were preparing some explosives," he said.

Eleven students were wounded in the blast, police said.

Missile strike

Meanwhile, Islamist militants said an American missile strike on one of their strongholds had made a peace agreement with the Pakistani government worthless.

Wednesday's strike in the South Waziristan region was the latest in a spate of American operations across the border from Afghanistan which have strained ties with Pakistan.

A pamphlet distributed by militants in South Waziristan yesterday accused Pakistani intelligence agents of involvement in the strike and undermining a peace deal brokered by various tribal elders.

The pamphlet said the accord was "worthless" and threatened unspecified action against tribesmen or aid groups cooperating with Pakistani security services.

US officials claim dealmaking has encouraged militancy

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has alleged that former president Pervez Musharraf made secret agreements with the United States and demanded that these should be exposed and made public.

The Pakistan Muslim League-N chief, upon his return Thursday from a two-week visit to London, said that his party would raise the issue in the parliament. He said the country now had a democratic dispensation and decisions on all important national issues should be made in parliament.

Responding to a question about political tussles in Punjab province ruled by the PML-N, he said some people were trying to create political uncertainty for their personal benefit.