12 killed in Pakistan blast

ISLAMABAD: A suicide car-bomber attacked a police van in the northwestern Pakistani town of Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday, killing 12 people, including three policemen, a doctor said.

There has been a relative lull in militant violence in recent weeks since government forces stepped up offensives in the Orakzai and Khyber regions of the northwest after largely clearing Pakistani Taliban strongholds in other areas.

The bomber attacked the police van in which an officer and some of his men were travelling to their police station, said policeman Iftikhar Khan.

A doctor at the town's main hospital said 12 dead and 10 wounded people had been brought in.

"We have 12 dead bodies in our emergency room," the doctor, Qibla Khan, said.

Among the dead were three policemen and two children, he said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack but authorities usually blame such strikes on pro-Taliban militants.

Militants regularly target security forces and police in their bloody campaign against the government in Pakistan's northwest.