Suicide blast in northwest Pakistan kills 6

By Sami Paracha

KOHAT, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide car-bomb killed at least six people in northwest Pakistan Friday in an attack security officials said was apparently aimed at minority Shi'ite Muslims.

The bomber was approaching a tribal council meeting, or jirga, called by Shi'ite Muslims to settle a dispute with majority Sunni Muslims, in the Orakzai ethnic Pashtun tribal region.

"The bomber tried to drive into a market in a Shi'ite neighborhood where the meeting was taking place but blew up his car when police tried to stop him at a checkpoint," said an intelligence agency official who declined to be identified.

Sectarian violence has flared in northwest Pakistan over the past year, mostly in the Kurram region on the Afghan border.

Security analysts say al Qaeda and Taliban militants, who are Sunnis and are bitterly opposed to Shi'ites, have stirred up sectarian divisions as they expand their influence through the northwest.

A government official said seven people had been killed in the attack in Kalaya, the main town in Orakzai, while a resident, Mohammad Hanif, said he had seen six bodies at the scene.

"Some of them were policemen," Hanif said by telephone.

Kamran Zeb, the top region's government administrator, confirmed the bomb blast but said he had no detail about how it happened or casualties.

Orakzai is one of the seven semi-autonomous Pakistan tribal regions known as Federally Administered Tribal Agencies on the Afghan border.

Orakzai has been relatively peaceful over the past year compared with other tribal regions such as Waziristan, Bajaur and Khyber.

But in October, more than 50 people were killed in Orakzai in a suicide attack at a tribal council called to draw up strategy to evict militants from the area.

(Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sanjeev Miglani)