Attack on security post kills 17 Pakistani

Attack on security post kills 17 Pakistani

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - More than 70 militants armed with rockets and mortars attacked a security checkpoint near the city of Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, the latest attack of an escalation in violence since Osama bin Laden was killed in the country earlier this month.

Two members of security forces and at least 15 insurgents were killed during the shootout of four hours, which erupted after two successive attacks at the security checkpoint set up to defend Peshawar, gateway to the troubled northwest region.

"They were well armed. They had heavy weapons, rockets, mortars, everything. The fight lasted about four and a half hours," said the policeman Ejaz Khan.

The attack occurred near the Khyber, part of the Pakistani tribal belt out of the reach of the law on the Afghan border seen as a bastion of militants, including al Qaeda and arms of Pakistan and Afghan Taliban.

Two members of security forces were killed and five wounded, Khan said.

Security forces repelled the first attack by militants, carried out shortly before midnight, authorities said.

"After a major attack carried out early in the morning. We also call for reinforcements and managed to fight back the attack," said a security official in Peshawar.

Nobody was immediately blamed for the attack, but militants linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban intensified their activities in Pakistan after the death of bin Laden in a town near a military garrison by U.S. special forces.

The Pakistani Taliban, which is close to Al Qaeda, vowed to avenge the death of bin Laden and said that its suicide bombers killed 80 people last week at a gym in the town of Charsadda paramilitary in the northwest.

In an alleged sectarian attack on Wednesday, two men on a motorcycle fired at a vehicle and killed four Shiite Muslims and wounded four others near the city of Quetta in southwestern China.

Sunni militant groups pro-Taliban, many of whom have links with Al Qaeda, are trying to foment conflict between the religious sects to destabilize the Pakistani government, which faces pressure from the U.S. and the West to curb militant groups, analysts say.

Pakistan is experiencing greater pressure to prove he is facing serious militancy since it was discovered that bin Laden apparently lived at least five years in the country about two hours drive from the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence service.