Six killed in militant attack in northwest Pakistan

PARACHINAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani militants blew up a government official's house in the Kurram region on the Afghan border on Sunday, killing him and five other people, local government and security officials said.

The attack in the Sadda area, which killed junior local official Sarfraz Khan, as well as his son, appeared to be part of a bloody campaign waged by al Qaeda-linked militants battling the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari, seen as pro-American.

Security has been beefed up across the country for Ashura, the biggest event on Shi'ite Muslims' calendar and a flashpoint for deadly attacks by Sunni militants in recent years.

The pre-dawn attack on Khan's home was not related to sectarian violence in predominantly Sunni Muslim Pakistan, and could be a reaction to an ongoing military crackdown on Taliban militants in the region, officials said.

"Explosives were planted near the boundary wall of the house and went off early in the morning, killing six people," local government official Khalid Mumtaz Kundi told Reuters.

"It is not related to Moharram, and could be a reaction to the military action," he said, referring to the Islamic calendar's first month.

Violence has intensified since July of 2007, when the army cleared out militants from a radical mosque in Islamabad, and victims have included former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated after returning home from self-imposed exile.

Her widower Zardari faces the formidable challenge of containing a militant insurgency while facing pressure to relinquish some of his powers and improve a troubled economy.

Marking the second anniversary of Bhutto's killing, Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gilani called for political reconciliation to strengthen democracy in Pakistan, ruled by the military for more than half of its 62-year history.

"We will inshallah (God willing) take forward Benazir Bhutto's politics of reconciliation," he told reporters after visiting Bhutto family's graveyard in a village in Sindh province.

Ashura, which ends on Monday in Pakistan, falls on the tenth day of Moharram and marks the climax of the 40-day mourning period to commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet.

Thousand of Pakistan's minority Shi'ites are expected on the streets of towns and cities to take part in the mourning ritual in which worshippers flog themselves with steel-tipped flails or slash their bodies with knives to express solidarity with Hussein.

Sectarian violence has killed thousands of Pakistanis over the past three decades. A bomb in Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi wounded at least 19 people on Saturday in an apparent attack on a Shi'ite procession.

Pakistani authorities are already struggling to show they can contain militants who have killed hundreds in bombings since an offensive launched in one of their strongholds in October.

The United States, grappling with an intensifying insurgency in Afghanistan, has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to crack down on militants who plot attacks inside Afghanistan, and has also intensified pilotless drone attacks in northwest Pakistan.

The death toll in the latest drone attack, carried out Saturday evening in the militant hub of North Waziristan, rose to 13 on Sunday, security officials said.

Pakistan officially objects to the drone strikes, saying they violate its sovereignty and the civilian casualties they sometimes inflict inflame public anger.

But U.S. officials say the strikes are carried out under an agreement with Pakistan that allows its leaders to decry them in public.

(Additional reporting by Hassan Orakzai; Writing by Augustin e Anthony; Editing by Michael Georgy)