MIRAN SHAH: Roadside bombs killed a total of five people and wounded 10 on Sunday in two separate blasts in Pakistan’s tribal zone near the Afghan border, officials said.

One of the improvised explosive devices was planted along the route of an army convoy in the Mir Ali area 35 kilometres east of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan district, they said.

“The explosion killed at least two soldiers and injured seven others,” a security official in Miran Shah said on condition of anonymity.

Another local security official confirmed the attack and said two of some 10 to 15 vehicles in the convoy were severely damaged.

In the Shin Qamar area of the Khyber tribal region, at least three labourers were killed and three wounded on Sunday in an explosion caused by a roadside bomb, said senior local official Nasir Khan.

He said the bomb went off as the labourers, who were carrying construction materials on mules, passed by. Local intelligence officials also confirmed the incident. Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt is made up of seven districts.

At least one person was killed and several injured in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi on Sunday morning after a cylinder explosion occurred at a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) station, Geo News reported.

Several vehicles, queuing up at the CNG station after 24 hours suspension of the gas supply, were also badly damaged besides the gas station due to the blast.

According to sources, the cylinder was installed on a minibus which was waiting in line for its turn at a CNG filling station in Mubina town area of Karachi.

All injured were shifted to a nearby hospital.

Police cleared the area and shifted the damaged bus from the site.

The Al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network in North Waziristan, blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan, is one of the thorniest issues in relations between Islamabad and Washington.

Washington has long demanded that Pakistan take action against the Haqqanis, which the then-top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, last year described as a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani intelligence service.

Pakistan says it will act according to its own needs and priorities and not on the wishes of a foreign government.