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 A suicide attack killed two Pakistani policemen and wounded five others as security forces tried to stop the bomber from walking into their local headquarters on Monday, police said. The bomber blew himself up outside the Shah Mansoor compound of police offices and residences in the northwestern town of Swabi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of Pakistan's capital Islamabad. "Two policemen were martyred and five others were injured when a suicide bomber exploded himself after being stopped at the main gate," senior police official Abdullah Khan told AFP. An office building was damaged in the force of the explosion, he said. Khan later told reporters that there were four assailants, one of them the suicide bomber who arrived by car. They all opened fire at policemen with Kalashnikov rifles before the bomber blew himself up as he was stopped from entering the facility. Khan said police returned fire and killed one of the bomber's accomplices, but that the other two fled. Police have launched a search for the men. More than 3,740 people have been killed in suicide attacks and bombings, blamed on homegrown Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks, since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad three years ago. According to the Pakistan military, 2,421 army and paramilitary soldiers were killed and 7,195 wounded in fighting with Islamist militants from 2002 until April this year. |