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Peshawar: A suicide bomber riding a motorised rickshaw blew himself up at a checkpoint in the volatile northwestern region yesterday, killing two people in the biggest test so far of the new government's fledgling peace process.
Police said the attacker rode up to the checkpoint on a bridge in the town of Bannu. He detonated his explosives when officers signalled to him to stop, said Dar Ali, the Bannu district police chief.
Police said one officer and one passer-by were killed. Four policemen and another civilian were wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, and it was not clear whether police had prevented an attack on a different target.
Aurangzeb Khan, another police official in Bannu, said the checkpoint was near the office of a "sensitive institution" - an apparent reference to an intelligence agency.
Bannu is also a garrison town housing some of the tens of thousands of troops deployed in the border region as part of the US-led war against terrorism.
Those troops as well as Taliban and Al Qaida militants have been observing an almost complete cease-fire since the new government took office five weeks ago.
Pursuing negotiations
The coalition government, made up of opponents of US-backed President Pervez Musharraf, is pursuing negotiations through tribal elders designed to curb rising Islamist militancy.
However, the talks appear to have snagged over militant demands that the army withdraw from their strongholds along the Afghan border.
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