[Al Arabiya Latest] A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of civilians guarded by security forces in Pakistan's northwest on Friday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 30, police said.The bomb triggered a large fire in the town of Tul, part of the northwestern district of Hangu, which is known for sectarian violence. It is near Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, which Washington calls a "headquarters" for al-Qaeda.
The blast which occurred near a petrol station in a market, district police chief Abdur Rashid Khan told AFP.
The convoy was under security escort. Officials say the Pakistani army had started protecting Shiite vehicles following sectarian tensions in the area.
Local lawmaker Mufti Janan Ahmed said it was a sectarian attack. The 20-vehicle convoy was carrying Shiite travellers coming from the northwestern towns of Parachinar to Kohat, he said.
The bomber ploughed his vehicle into the middle of the convoy, and the victims appeared to be mostly Shiites, the lawmaker said. "We have found the engine of the vehicle which was used in the attack," said police official Islamuddin Khattak.
The blast destroyed five vehicles in the convoy. Police were battling to extinguish the fire caused by the explosion, he said.
Sectarian violence
Sectarian violence between majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims has killed more than 4,000 people in Pakistan since the late 1980s. Shiites account for about 20 percent of the country's 167 million people.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since July 2007, a deadly campaign blamed on Islamist militants opposed to the government's alliance with the United States.
But after a significant rise in bloodshed in late 2009, there has been a marked decline in attacks so far this year.
Pakistani officials have equated the trend to the widely suspected death, although still not confirmed, of Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud and military offensives that have disrupted militant networks.
There have been no mass civilian losses or bombings in major cities since a bombing at a volleyball match killed 101 people on New Year's Day. That was around two weeks before the U.S. drone attack that possibly killed Mehsud.
Attacks targeting Shiite Muslims killed 76 people in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, in late December and early February.
Pakistan is under huge U.S. pressure to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants who pose a domestic threat and who infiltrate Afghanistan to attack Western forces.
Pakistan's military claims to have made strong gains against Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds over the past year, launching major offensives in the northwestern district of Swat and the tribal region of South Waziristan.